Shadow Guard 1: Awakening
by RMVHXtreme
Summary: We all wish Undertale were real, right? How do you know it isn't? Five teenage Undertale fans are about to discover just that, but the monsters they meet want to, for lack of a better way of putting it, get them involved in something dangerous. Lots of human soul theory involved. Rated T for violence, censored cursing, and romance.
1. Half Day

**Welcome, fanbase! A few things I want to put out there before we start: first of all, this fanfiction is an original concept combining humans' life with monsters with epic action and combat scenarios. Though it may not look like an Undertale fanfiction at first, I guarantee it will by the fourth chapter. There's also a lot of focus on the properties of different colored humans souls.**

 **Now, some clarification on the reasons for the rating. The violence isn't too bad, nothing really gory or graphic or anything like that, just people getting into fights and getting hurt. And when I say "censored cursing," I mean characters will curse, but I'll replace the cursing with asterisks. The romance, well, I'm just going to say that it's by no means deserving of an M rating. You let me know if I'm any good at that sort of writing.**

 **One more thing: I put a lot of thought into making this story as realistic and canon as possible. You won't regret reading this.**

* * *

"Half days are awesome, am I right?"

It's the end of the fourth six weeks of our sophomore year of high school. I'm just meeting up with Azalea, Darius, Minerva and Erika at the bus loop as we start heading towards our bus.

"Heck yeah," says Darius. "No homework due, no actual work to do in any of our classes, and of course we get to leave school early; they might even be better than full days off, get what I'm saying?"

"And is it just me, or is the weather always better when we get out on a half day?" said Azalea. She has a point; it's pretty windy today, with temperatures probably in the fifties, and the sky is partly cloudy, giving us shade from the brightness of the Sun every now and then. I love it, mostly because it's perfect weather for wearing my awesome jacket.

"It's not as late in the day, so we've got more energy and positivity left in ourselves. That, and the Sun hasn't had as much time to warm this place up," says Erika, being the realist she is.

"Well, I'm just glad I don't have any freaking homework this weekend," says Minerva. "Homework is the absolute worst thing about school. We're here seven and a half hours a day, and they expect us to work for two more hours when we get home?"

"Darn right, school would be a heck of a lot better without homework," I say as we step on to the bus, each of my friends making their sounds of agreement. We take our usual three seats near the middle of the bus, me and Darius on one, Azalea and Minerva on the seat across from us, and Erika alone behind us on the seat next to the emergency side door. I'd switch places with Minerva, but I've heard it's illegal for males to sit with females on school buses.

"Everyone remember the plan for tonight?" Darius says right as the bus is about to start moving.

"Chill for the afternoon, meet up at Zeze's at 7:30 for dinner, and then our long-awaited dark run of Almond Creek Linear Park?" I say excitedly. "That's what I remember. Am I wrong?"

"You're good to go, X," said Minerva. "Looks like the rest of us are as well." I look over at Azalea, who seems to be having trouble staying seated, and back at Erika, who's smiling confidently.

"Well, I'm playing Crossy Road now," I say, and I take out my iPad and start up the game.

We all play our mobile games (I end up playing Darius at a few rounds of Drive Ahead) until the bus gets to our neighborhood; Azalea gets off at the first stop, Erika and I get off at the second, and Darius and Minerva continue to the third stop from which they head home.

"Can you wait for that dark run tonight, Erika?" I say as we start walking home, past a stationary yet running car with really dark windows.

"Well, it's been almost a month since we came up with this idea, so I figure I could wait another eight hours. What are you going to do until then, X?" She's chill like that.

"Eh, read Undertale fanfictions, play Splatoon or Super Smash Bros, pretty much the usual. How about you?"

"I actually think I'm going to take a walk downtown this afternoon. My mom is friends with a teacher, so she's babysitting her kid today."

"Oh yeah, I get that. Well, I'll see you later."

"See you."

With that, I walk up the driveway and shove my way through the door.

* * *

My name's Xavier, but I go by X because it just sounds cool, and Xavier sounds so much like a little kid's name to me. Of course, that has made me the butt of a lot of annoying jokes in algebra class, but I've sort gotten used to it by now. That, and everyone gets bored of pointing at me whenever our teacher tells us to "find x."

Normally my brother would be coming home on the bus with me, but he's being driven over to his best friend's house by his best friend's mom, so now that I'm home, it's just me and mom in the house.

"Hi Xavier! How was your half day?" says Mom, who's on the couch watching TV and playing on her smartphone at the same time.

"Pretty darn good," I tell her. "Our Spanish teacher actually put on a movie in English for once."

"That sounds good. Well, if you want to go out with your friends tonight, you'd better make sure you get all of your chores and stuff done before then, right?"

"Mom, it's not until 7:30. Of course I'll be done way before then."

"Just make sure you don't forget anything. Especially lunch; you haven't eaten lunch yet today, you know."

"Holy crud, I am an idiot," I said. Up until Mom said that I've had no intentions of eating a full meal right after school. "I'm not going to have a very big lunch though, I'm going to try to eat as much as possible at Zeze's tonight."

"Alright, that's fine," my mom says going back to playing on her phone. At this point, I go into the kitchen to make myself a roast beef sandwich and a bowl of applesauce.

It's my week to clean the kitchen, so while I'm eating, I turn on the faucet for the water to start heating up. Then after I've finished my sandwich, I go and plug the sink and add soap. From there I have just enough time to eat my applesauce before the sink fills up. Dang, I apparently really like to multitask today. I carry dishes to the sink and stop the water at the same time.

Okay, chores are boring, so long story short, cookies, radio, wash table, sweep, clean my room, and now I'm on the Wii U ready to kill some time with Splatoon. And-holy dang, there's a Splatfest coming and it's Pokémon Red vs. Pokémon Blue. I was seriously not expecting such self-promotion from Nintendo like that, but I guess I'm not too surprised.

Yeah, I'm pretty much spending the rest of the afternoon playing video games and reading Undertale fanfictions. Oh yeah, about Undertale: that holy grail of video games is my reason to live right now; not that I'd kill myself without it or anything, but you get the point.

I played it about two months ago, during Christmas break, and let me just say, how dare my dad for hoarding that game on his computer for weeks and not telling anyone he had it or even playing it up to the Toriel fight! Once I beat it, I was not even close to being done with the whole concept and idea of monsters, intelligent creatures with bodies made of magic, living in our world today. So I got into reading fanfictions.

My favorite Undertale fanfictions have always been the ones about monsters' lives on the surface, but I also like the ones about Asriel and Chara and the other six humans that fell into the Underground. Some of the fanfictions about OC monsters are pretty cool too. The best about Undertale fanfictions, though, is that Undertale has so much potential for fanfictions that there's almost always an update on a good fanfiction to read. Like right now: I've been playing Splatoon for an hour, and now there's an update on this one involving PTA stuff.

So now I'm going back and forth between video games and fanfictions, until, holy crud, it's almost 7:00. This is the part where I get myself and my bike ready to go out. Tonight is going to be seriously epic.

* * *

 **Yep, this is about a group of teenagers who love Undertale but otherwise currently have nothing to do with the events of it. That will change though. We just need to do some exposition first.**

 **Next chapter, more about X's gang, and what could go wrong eating out with your cool friends?**


	2. The Gang and the Stranger

**For Your Information: This chapter is sort of long, due to a lot of character descriptions. Don't skip it though, because the plot starts to develop as well.**

* * *

After letting my mom know I'm leaving, I grab my smartphone, my wallet and my bike lock and step into garage to get my bike ready. And by that, I pretty much just mean pumping the tires; it's been a while since I've ridden my bike, so the tires need some more air. My brother's all set to close the garage door behind me, so with that, I get on and start racing off to Zeze's. With it being late February, it's pretty much already dark.

The restaurant/buffet is only about a mile from my house, so I should be able to make it in less than ten minutes, especially if I take a shortcut...through the church parking lot. I only have to cross one road, which is taking a minute, but not too long. Now I'm there, and...it's only 7:12? Dang, I'm fast. It was only 7:05 when I left. Well, guess I'll lock up my bike and hope that I'm not the only one who decided to get here early.

I go and stand a little closer to the sidewalk. Currently I'm wearing my favorite outfit: my white epicface shirt, my black and red drum line jacket, and jeans. I always wear my epicface shirt on Fridays, because that's one of the best days of the week. I'd wear it on Saturdays, but then I wouldn't get to show it off to people at school. My drum line jacket I wear every day of the week. Except on weekends, that's when it gets washed. Same with jeans (I usually wear sweatpants and my gray hoodie on weekends). My hair, as usual, looks boring as always.

After just a few minutes of waiting, I can already see Azalea riding down here at a leisurely pace. Azalea is pretty much my girlfriend, though we've never kissed...yet. Her skin is almost what I would call pale, she's about as skinny as I am, her face is beautiful, her voice is beautiful, her red hair is beautiful, her...crud I got off track right there.

Anyways, about Azalea's actual personality. She's really nice, though kind of shy sometimes. When she's not worrying about what others think of her (which she usually never does around me and the rest of the gang), though, she can get pretty energetic. She's probably the most positive in general of all of us.

"Hey Azalea!" I call out as she rides over to the streetlight to which my bike is locked.

"Hey X!" she responds, locking her pink bike next to my silver one. Today she also happens to be wearing _her_ favorite outfit: a white shirt, her purple jacket, and a purple skirt. Okay, yes, she did that on purpose.

She runs straight to me and gives me a quick hug. "I knew you'd be here early. Can't wait to eat, can you?"

"Nope, I'm freaking starving right now. I didn't have a big lunch or any snacks this afternoon." I say as we break our hug. "Gotta eat as much as possible here, right?"

"Yep, just don't get fat or anything!"

"I'm not gonna get fat. We'll burn off these calories during our dark run, right?"

"I hope; you wouldn't want me to get fat, would you?"

We both laugh at that for a second, and then hug each other again. From there, we stand around and talk about music and Undertale for a few minutes, before Minerva almost crashes into us at what looks like 20 miles per hour.

"YES! That's two in a row!" shouts Minerva as she steers into the parking lot. Minerva is is probably the most competitive person in the gang. It's not easy to hang out with her without her trying to make something a competition at least once. Thankfully, though, she's very fair and polite about it. She's also rather encouraging towards us whenever things are getting hard for us.

Apparently, she was racing Darius to the restaurant.

"Dang, girl, how much do you work out?" Darius calls out as he zooms past us about as fast as Minerva did. Darius has got to be the coolest of us all. When he tries, it's not hard for him to win people over to any cause he may have, though he's not always the smartest guy around. He would never cheat on Minerva or anything, though, even though they haven't been dating quite as long as Azalea and I have (which is about three months).

"Thirty minutes a day!" Minerva calls out, locking up her green bike. Looks like she changed into a green crop top since we got home from school today, but she's still wearing track pants. She shakes her long, black hair out of her face and walks over to where Azalea and I are standing.

Darius then locks his blue bike next to Minerva's and runs over here to catch up with her. He's wearing his epic black leather jacket, black shades, a black shirt that says "Like a boss" and dark jeans. "What's up, X, Azalea?" he asks. "We would have given you more alone time, but then Minerva wanted to race, so..."

"Oh, it's fine!" assures Azalea. "We were just talking about stuff."

"Like what?" Minerva asks.

"Undertale," I say.

"Well, can't say I blame you guys, that game is priceless," Darius says. "Like you, babe," he says to Minerva right before their lips meet for a kiss.

"Uh, buddy, we're sixteen and we're a out by a sidewalk," I remind him.

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that," Darius apologizes. "Anyways, we passed Erika on the way here. She was going kinda slowly but she should be here soon."

I look down the street, and sure enough, Erika's almost here on her red bike. I tend to see Erika as smartest person in the gang. She always uses her time and money wisely and thinks carefully before making a decision. She also has sort of a habit of answering questions completely honestly, no matter the circumstance. Though she's not the most social, and hardly ever talks to anyone outside of the gang. Today she has on a blue hooded coat, white gloves, and jeans.

"Hi Erika!" Azalea says as we all follow her over to the streetlight where she's locking her bike.

"Hi guys," Erika says. "Wait a minute; you guys don't look very warm. Aren't you guys afraid you're going to get cold tonight?"

"Oh... I guess I assumed that all the exercise we'd be getting tonight would warm up or something, and I don't want to get sweaty," I tell her.

"Your hands will get numb, but don't worry; I brought extra gloves." Erika says holding up a bunch of gloves she took from her coat pocket.

"Wow, thanks Erika," I say. "But we don't need those yet; it's time to eat now, right?" At that point, we're all walking towards the entrance to Zeze's Pasta and Pizza.

* * *

I call us "the gang," but technically we're more of a clique, I guess. We all started hanging out with each other in our neighborhood this last summer, and it turned out we were interested in similar video games and pastimes, though some of our values are slightly different. That's probably a good thing though; Erika helps us all do the responsible thing, Minerva keeps us going when things get difficult, Azalea cheers us up when we're losing morale (especially me), Darius makes any situation a little more interesting, and I, uh...I haven't quite figured out exactly why they like to keep me around. I have been called funny before, but that's only because I'm occasionally able to make a really good reference to a Vine, meme, or YouTube video.

That Undertale tho, you may or may not have noticed that I cannot shut up about it for long. As soon as school started back up after Christmas break, I'll admit that I practically forced my friends to play it. Undertale is made to be experienced, so you do not talk about it to anyone who hasn't played it yet. Except Undertale was all I wanted to talk about, so that meant they all had to play it first. It turns out, as I expected, they all loved it. Azalea beat it first, Minerva was the first to finish a genocide (besides me), Erika was shocked by its lack of archetypes, and Darius spent a while messing with the characters. They probably don't believe it actually happened like I do, yet somehow, Erika has never told me that yet. I find that amazingly kind of her.

So...Zeze's Pasta and Pizza. It's one of the best places in town to go out to eat in my opinion. You pay to get in, and from there you can fill up your plates with as much salad, pasta, and pizza as you could possibly eat. Which is exactly what we're going to do tonight.

"Okay, any ideas for deciding who goes in first?" I say as we wait in line to get in. "As much as I want to get us all in quickly, we're paying individually, so we need to figure out who goes first."

"Tag!" shouts Minerva suddenly. "We'll pay in order of placing at the end of the game."

"That's a good idea, but only four can play," says Erika. "But I'll volunteer to go third. You guys compete for first, second, fourth and last."

"Sounds fair," says Azalea, and we set ourselves up for a one-minute round of Tag on Minerva's phone while Erika holds it in place. Turns out Darius gets first, I'm second, Azalea comes in third, and Minerva ends up last.

"Well, looks like I at least win at something today," teases Darius.

"Shut up. It was only because you kept hiding under that stupid tree," Minerva retorts playfully.

"Guys, I think we're up," I say, pointing at the counter. Darius goes up to pay for his food and drink, and as soon as he's done I do the same (stupid inflation making this place cost forty cents more than it did last time).

From there, I proceed to the buffet to grab myself a big plate of salad with a little too much ranch dressing (that stuff is especially tasty here), a bowl of pasta with a little too much tomato sauce (that stuff is also really delicious), and two slices of pizza (which is delicious, but not as good as that of some places). Then I set my tray down at the booth where Darius set his and head over to the soda fountain to fill up my drink.

I am no longer able to refrain from digging straight into my salad, making sure ever bite is soaked in ranch dressing. By the time the rest of the gang is here with their food, I'm already done with my salad and my first piece of pizza.

"So, like I was about say to Azalea earlier," I start, "have you ever noticed that there might be something up with Undyne?"

"What makes you say that?" Darius asks.

"Well first of all, humans are supposed to be physically stronger than monsters, but Undyne's probably stronger than any human. Also, have you noticed that during a genocide, you take down Undyne in one hit, but she doesn't die, and instead transforms into a stronger form? And then she starts melting right before she actually dies?"

"I never played genocide," says Azalea.

"Huh. Never thought of that," says Erika. "Maybe she uses magic to give herself a strength boost or something?"

"Maybe, but that doesn't explain her refusal to die." I say. "It can't be Determination, because that would make her soul survive death, probably."

"Maybe one of those fanfictions will cover that eventually, X," Darius says, stuffing pizza in his mouth.

"Yeah, I guess, but they don't-" I suddenly stop taking as I notice someone sitting alone at a different table. Someone big, wearing some sort of black cloak that reminds me of the river person. I've seen this person before.

"Is something wrong, X?" Azalea says.

"Huh? No, it's just...have you ever noticed that guy right there?" I ask quietly.

"Not really, why? He looks like he's just here eating, like us,"

"Well, yeah, but...I think I've seen him before recently. This might be stupid, but I feel like he may be stalking me."

"That's not stupid, X. Don't worry, though, I don't think there's any reason for anyone to stalk you. You don't have a credit card, you never hurt anyone, you're fine."

"Yeah, I guess you're right, Azalea. But keep an eye out, alright? Even if he's not stalking us, nobody dresses like that. He may still be up to something."

"If it makes you feel better, I will," Azalea says right before going back to eating salad. Now I'm also getting back to eating all this deliciousness that we scored for ourselves.

Once I've finished everything, I go back to the buffet counter to make another bowl of pasta and another plate of salad. I go back and stuff all that down my gut, at which point I'm finishing just my first cup of soda. Now I go and get a refill and...crap, I was so hungry I forgot to pace myself! Instead of more pizza, I take a couple of brownies and a cinnamon roll for dessert, 'cause that's about all I can eat at this point.

We all start talking about Super Smash Bros stages for a minute until I finish eating.

"Well, I'm headed off to the game room, anybody wanna come?" I announce.

Darius and Azalea both choose to come with me, while Minerva and Erika, decide to stay back at the table. We run straight to our favorite thing in the game room: the coin pushing machine.

Last time I came here, I figured out how the machine makes money: any quarter that falls down one of two little slots on either side is gone forever. This time, I resolve to stop playing if I ever end up with any profits.

We each put in a quarter while Darius holds the button to stop the machine. After he lets go, two quarters come out.

"Okay, Darius, how're we deciding who gets these this time?" I ask, taking the quarters and putting them in a pocket separate from the rest of my money.

"Once we're done playing together, we'll see who can collect the most coins in a round of Subway Surfers," he suggests.

"Sounds fun!" Azalea says. I'd noticed before that if one person gets everything that doesn't divide evenly for a session, at least one person has a pretty good chance of profiting, even if the others lose money.

"Wait, a minute, I gotta go to the bathroom," says Darius. "You two have fun together for a minute."

Darius runs straight off to the bathroom. Wait a minute, is he trying to get me and Azalea to further our relationship or something? I mean, yeah, it's been three months and we still haven't kissed yet, but that's not because we don't love each other or anything, we're just...not up for that sort of thing. Especially not here.

"Uh, I actually need to use the bathroom too," Azalea says slowly. "Sorry."

"That's fine, I can hold our spot," I assure her. She walks off smiling at me.

Well, Darius's plan failed miserably. Assuming he had one.

Now I really want to try the machine myself, 'cause those quarters look really close to coming out, but I've only got five quarters left.

"Good night, sir," a quiet voice says.

I look to the left, and then I almost fall down backwards. That guy in black is standing right next to me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," they say as I start reaching for my phone.

"That's...fine," I barely manage to say. "You can...do the machine now if...you want..."

"I heard you and your friends talking about Undyne earlier," the mysterious person says.

"Oh...you like Undertale too?" I ask nervously, but slightly less nervously than I was a second ago.

"I also heard what you said about me," they say. "I'm a she, actually."

Okay, this...woman has definitely been stalking me.

"Sorry," I say quickly, freaking out again. "You have great hearing...ma'am..."

"Thank you," she says, her calm, quiet tone of voice not changing. "But listen, all I have to say is this: if you want your life to get a lot more interesting, meet me in Town Park at midnight. I promise you, you would regret not coming."

"Uh, okay...can I bring a friend?" I ask, thinking of Azalea.

"That would be a good idea. Farewell, friend," she says, leaving towards the exit.

Friend?! We are not friends, I don't even know who the heck she is! Also, what does Undyne have to do with anything? Is this lady going to show me Undyne's secret or something?

Well, Azalea is back, so I guess I can forget about what just happened for now.

"X? Is that person bothering you again?" Azalea asks worriedly.

"Actually...yeah, but she's gone now," I tell her.

"She? How do you know she's a girl?"

"I'll tell you later. We gotta finish with this machine if we wanna have time for the dark run." I say just as Darius gets back.

We didn't have that much luck, but Azalea ended up winning at Subway Surfers (which we played from my phone), so she's in the green at least.

From there, we go back to meet up with Minerva and Erika, who've been chatting with each other and drinking soda.

"You ladies ready for that dark run tonight?" Darius asks enthusiastically.

"Heck yeah," says Minerva, jumping up from her chair and grabbing Darius's hand.

"Actually," Erika says, "I just remembered a few minutes ago, I can't come with you guys on that tonight. I've got...something more important to attend to tonight."

"What?! Erika, we've been planning this for a month!" I almost yell. "I thought we all agreed that we were all free tonight!"

"Look, I'm really sorry, but I've just been informed that I need to be somewhere very important tomorrow morning, and I really need to make sure I get enough sleep tonight to be ready for it."

"...Alright, I'm sorry I overreacted. We'll be fine without you, you can go and get some sleep."

"It's fine, thanks. Here are your gloves," she says, handing us each a pair of gloves. "Just make sure to bring these back Monday morning alright?"

"Again, thanks for these. We darn well will bring them back. Good night!"

"Good night, guys!" With that, Erika puts on her coat and leaves.

I then look at the rest of us and smile. We may be one short, but we're still going to have a heck of a good time tonight.

* * *

 **Any guesses as to who this mysterious person might be? I know it's probably obvious what she is, but who, exactly?**

 **Next chapter, that dark run. In the woods. At night.**


	3. The Dark Run

**Just read. You already know something's going to happen.**

* * *

I go and grab one last cinnamon roll before we all head out the door.

Dang, I forgot how cold it was tonight. Well, at least every part of me is covered except my head now that I have gloves. Unfortunately, not all of us ended up that way. We should warm up from the exercise, right?

We each head over to our bikes to unlock them and then take off. Right now, it's about 9:00, and I need to be home by 10:30, so we have some time, but not much. Since Almond Creek Linear Park is across the street from our neighborhood, we end up having to hit a few more crosswalks to get there, so it takes about ten minutes.

"Everybody ready for this?" I call out as we get to the start of the trail.

"HECK YES! LET'S GET GOING ALREADY!" Minerva screams, almost making me knock my bike over.

"Okay, we're going!" I say quickly.

Almond Creek Linear Park is probably my favorite thing about Smithplain, Texas. It's about two miles of bike trails that connect to a few neighborhoods and all the major parks on this side of town. I'd been on this trail a whole ton of time with my family, though I've only ridden/ran the whole thing two or three times. And none of those times have been at night.

Okay, so the only reason we call it a dark run is because we're going at night, which is probably not as big a deal as we make it out to be, but come on, we're sixteen. Let us have some fun with this sort of thing. Besides, it's slightly more dangerous and therefore more fun at night, right?

Anyways, we're planning to do this round-trip twice, maybe three times if we have time, which is plenty of opportunity for something interesting to happen. Honestly I have no idea what to expect, but it has to be fun. And hey, it looks like we got something fun already.

"Who here thinks I can make that jump?" Darius asks us pointing to a plank of wood leaning against a log.

"Me," Minerva calls out immediately.

"Well, I guess..." I answer. "Why, are you going to do it?"

"Yeah. Film it, dude," he says. "Whether or not I make it, it'll be a great video to show to people."

"I guess I can't argue with that," says Azalea; she is pretty agreeable.

I get out my smartphone and get ready to record a video while Darius sets himself up about a hundred feet away. And I don't mean to be racist, but it's kinda hard to see him back there.

"I'm ready!" I shout out to him.

Darius takes a minute to scope out the situation, and then I hit the record button right as he takes off at full speed towards the three-inch wide ramp in front of us. As he gets close, Azalea grabs my hand, I aim my phone at the ramp, now he's hit the ramp, and...he made it. He freaking made it.

"Holy daaang!" I yell, stopping the video. "How the heck did you land that?"

Minerva sprints straight to him while he's walking his bike back and throws her arms over his shoulders. "That was amazing! You HAVE to do that sort of thing more often!"

"I was so scared!" says Azalea. "You were going so fast!"

"Bike jumps: I nail that," Darius says, smiling while I laugh at his YouTube reference.

I let him know that I'll send him the video later this weekend, and then we get going again. Not much happens between Town Park and Lily Park, except for me hitting a small rock and almost falling. When we get to the big hill in the middle of the trail, Minerva is the first one up and the first one down, and we hear her tires skid quite a bit when she hits the turns going down. The rest of our first run is pretty boring, actually, until we start heading back.

I hear a thwack off to the left right after we come back under the freeway.

"Guys, you wanna check that out?" Minerva asks, stopping her bike.

"Yeah, that sounds interesting," Darius answers.

"Wait, what?" I ask.

"Didn't you hear that? There's someone over here in the trees," Minerva says.

"Well, yeah, but what if it's something dangerous? Like a wild animal?" Azalea warns us.

"Guys, come on, if there were wild animals here, they wouldn't put a bike trail here," Darius argues. "It's probably just someone trying to play a prank on us. I'm going over to check it out."

"Alright, fine, but everyone use your phone's flashlight app," I say. "I'll go in about six feet behind you. Azalea, keep an eye on me. Minerva, make sure nothing shows up in any other direction. This is going to be fun."

"That's the spirit," Minerva cheers. I take off my gloves to open up my flashlight app while everyone else does the same. Dang, it's cold out here.

"X, I'm scared," Azalea says, hugging me.

"Don't worry, Azalea, we'll be fine," I say, waving my flashlight-phone around. "Look, we can blind anything that attacks us." Phone flashlights are surprisingly bright.

As soon as Azalea starts looking like she won't start crying or anything, Darius starts slowly wrestling through the branches and bushes to the left of the trail, shining his flashlight in every direction. I go in a few seconds later, securing the area behind him with my own flashlight. Wait a minute, I think I saw something shiny...

There's a knife stuck in a tree.

Suddenly, I hear something going on near Darius.

"GET HIM OFF ME! HE'S GOT A KNIFE!"

I aim my flashlight at Darius and almost drop it. Some kid, probably twelve or thirteen years old, is pinning him to the ground, with Darius barely holding the kid's hand with a knife in it away from himself.

I run straight up to them and kick this murder kid off of Darius as hard as I can possibly kick him. Then I grab Darius's hand and help him get up before the knife kid does.

"HOLY ****! What's going on?!" Minerva yells.

"GO GO GO!" I holler back as Darius and I come sprinting out of the trees, with me almost tripping on a branch. We all shove our phones in our pockets and ready our bikes to get the heck outta Dodge, except I don't have a kickstand, so I take an extra second. I zoom off behind Azalea (who seems so wracked with fear she can't ride straight at all)...until my bike skids to a sudden stop and I topple over to my right and hit my head.

I look up, ignoring my head injury aaaaand murder kid from hell threw a knife and it hit my back tire.

"X!" screams Azalea while I look up at psycho knife murder kid who's ten feet from me and then at Azalea who's stopping her bike FIFTEEN FEET FROM ME AND THEN BACK AT...the stranger in the black cloak?!

As Azalea helps me up, I know this isn't brain damage making me see things. The figure of the cloaked lady is wide enough that I can't see murder kid anymore. She points a yellow, spiked weapon at us.

"You should leave here now. I'll take care of your bicycle. Good night, friends."

I put my hand over the lump on my head and run off with Azalea. As she gets back on her bike, I'm about to look back at the stranger and see what she's doing to murder kid from hell when I notice a small glow coming from downwards...but when I look down, there's nothing there.

"What happened? Are you alright?" Minerva asks frantically when we catch up to her and Darius. "I swear, that kid, I'M GONNA-"

"We're fine, he's gone now," I tell them. "Someone saved us. My tire's flat but she said she'd take care of it."

"I hope it was the kid's mom," Minerva says angrily. "I hope she grounds him for life. I hope she beats him and yells at him and gives him-"

"Honey, it's fine," Darius assures her. "The important thing is, we're all okay. Right?"

"Yep!" I say.

"Can we go home now?" asks Azalea worriedly. "I don't want something like that to happen again..."

"Sure," I tell her quietly, "let's go home. I'm feeling tired anyways."

We keep going, slowly because I don't have a bike anymore, until we get to Lily Park, at which point we go out onto the street sidewalk where we feel safer (though normally I wouldn't because there's nothing but a curb between the sidewalk and the street). By the time we get to Azalea's street, it's 10:20.

"You two go on ahead, I need to talk to Azalea alone for a minute," I tell Darius and Minerva, who happily say good night, and ride off into the night.

"Is this about the person who saved us, X?" Azalea asks.

"Yes," I tell her. "You know how she was bothering me at Zeze's?

"I think I remember that.."

"She came up and talked to me. She said that I should meet her at Town Park at midnight tonight."

"Really? Why would she want you?"

"She said she heard us talking about Undyne. Just thinking out loud, but what if she's...?"

"...A monster?"

"Yeah, I know there's no way, but-"

"Hey...she could be. Right after she saved us, I thought I saw something glowing on my chest..."

"I think the same thing happened to me. You wanna come with me to meet her?"

"Sure...but do we have to go through the trail? I don't wanna almost die again."

"Of course, we'll do whatever you want. I'll bring a baseball bat just in case."

"Thanks so much. I'll be ready in an hour or so. See you later!"

"Bye Azalea!"

I turn and walk home. The night's not over. The worst of it is.

* * *

 **Now can you tell who she is? Cause next chapter, we're gonna find out!**


	4. Midnight Rendezvous

**Aaaaand another chapter for you.**

* * *

 **Azalea**

Ahhh...what time is it? Oh, there's a digital clock next to the bed that says it's 7:30. Not very late, but not very early. Wait, where did X go? Did he get up before I did? Yep, sounds like he's in the shower, I can hear him singing. Well, that was nice of him to let me sleep.

Speaking of sleep, I slept amazingly well last night. Seriously, I feel like I could run a whole five miles today, almost. I'm going to get up right now, in fact. Actually, X is still in the shower, so I guess I'll wait a little. Instead, I go and get my phone and lie back down while playing Subway Surfers. It might help to practice that game a little for the next time we have a dispute.

"Good morning, Azalea!"

I pause my game, look up and see X exiting the bathroom wearing his jacket, his 8-bit Mario shirt, and jeans. "Oh, hey X!" I greet back. "How are you doing?"

"Pretty freaking awesome, actually," he answers. "They were not lying about the magic in that bed. I bet I have at least, like, 40 HP right now or something."

I laugh and hop out of bed. "Yeah, I'm feeling pretty much the same way. I'm going to go get dressed now, alright?"

"Yeah, sure, I'll go check on the others."

I grab a shirt, jacket, skirt, and underwear from my suitcase while X goes out into the living room, and then lock myself in the bathroom to get dressed. Wow, I should probably also fix my hair while I'm in here. Hopefully the others won't mind if I take an extra minute or two...

Okay, I'm done. I exit the bathroom and enter the living room area, where Erika had been sleeping on the couch, and see everyone else having a small conversation.

"Hey Azalea, we were thinking of going and seeing if this place has a breakfast area, are you up for that?" Darius asks me.

"Sure, I'm actually pretty hungry," I reply.

"Cool," X says. "Don't forget your room key."

I step back into the bedroom and grab my phone and wallet off the floor by suitcase, and follow everyone else out the door into the hallway. From there, we find the elevator and ride it down to the bottom floor.

Darius runs out to the dining area the instant the elevator doors open. "Yep, this place looks all set up for breakfast," he announces.

I walk over to see what exactly what he means by that. As I step into the dining area, I notice the lines of tables across opposite sides of the room, one side labeled "Physical" and the other "Magical." The tables are filled with dispensers containing cereal, bagels, juices, bread and toasters, and pretty much everything else included in the average hotel breakfast. In the back is an empty stage, and scattered throughout the room are seating tables.

"I'm going to try some monster food," Erika says.

"Yeah, me too," Minerva seconds.

"Alright, but I should probably warn you guys, it won't fill you up much," X cautions.

X and I split over to the physical side, leaving Erika, Minerva, and Darius to get magical food. I get a bagel and a piece of sausage and fill a styrofoam cup with orange juice while X makes himself a bowl of cereal.

"Oh, you can go sit down if you want, I'm going to need a minute to make some toast," X tells me when he notices me waiting for him.

I find a decent-sized table and sit down to start eating. A few seconds later, Darius, Erika and Minerva join me.

"Alright, first bite of monster food, here we go," Darius says just before cutting himself a bite of a magical sausage patty with a plastic knife and shoving it in his mouth with a plastic fork. He chews for a second and then stops suddenly. "Holy crap, what is this, cotton candy? I barely even have to swallow!"

Erika takes a bite of magical blueberry muffin. "Wow, I want to say that this tastes amazing," she comments, "but I can't tell how much of what I'm feeling actually counts as tasting."

"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" I ask.

Minerva shoves an entire sausage patty into her mouth at once. "Yeah, but I'm hungry, and this stuff shrinks down to, like, nothing as soon as I start eating it."

"What is going on here?" X asks as he approaches the table.

"Bekfast!" Darius exclaims.

I nearly spit out my drink at that. How on Earth are these guys so darn hilarious?

"Oh my gosh, that was perfect!" I remark as soon I'm able to calm down.

"I guess it kinda was, huh?" X replies. "Thanks."

"Anyways, I think I'm going to go get me some real food," Minerva announces, standing up. "You guys can have the rest of this if you want."

Darius and Erika follow her to the physical food, while X grabs Minerva's last magical sausage patty with his fork and bites a large chunk out of it.

"Yep, this stuff is still pretty good," he comments. "You want her muffin?"

"Oh, sure, thanks!" I reply, taking Minerva's chocolate chocolate chip muffin and stuffing it in my face. Whoa, hold on, this is way too tasty for me to eat this fast. However much of it fits in my mouth at the moment quickly starts melting into energy and rushing through my entire body. Tastes just as good, and feels very refreshing, but leaves me hungry for more.

X and I work on eating the rest of our physical food until Darius, Minerva, and Erika come back with theirs. We spend the next few minutes just eating, until Darius gets out his phone.

"Yep, still can't get on the wi-fi," he laments. "So what do you guys think we should do after this?"

"Well, I saw this arcade place not too far away from here," X suggests. "We could probably meet some people there or something, and, I don't know, I guess I kinda just think it'd pretty cool to go there since arcades are all tricked out and stuff, you know?"

"That sounds fun! I like arcades," I comment. Somehow I just can't resist saying something nice to him whenever he starts rambling like that.

"Sure, why not?" Erika chimes in. "It's Spring Break; there's got to be at least some interesting people there."

"Alright, well, let me just finish eating real quick and then we can go back upstairs and get ready," Darius says before doing exactly that.

Once we're all done eating, we all head back up to the room so Darius and Erika can grab their keys and stuff.

"Hey guys," I ask once while we unlock the room, "couldn't we use our powers more often here?"

"Holy crap, you're right!" X exclaims. "How the heck did I forget that? Yeah, bring your watch things, guys!"

I run over to our bedroom, get my watch out of my suitcase, put it on, and activate the magic just for fun. As I do so, my soul starts glowing green on my chest, and my shield appears in front of me. With a little experimentation, I've found that I can move it around almost telepathically, change it's shape, and even make it disappear and reappear, but I can't hold it out any further from me than my arms can reach. It's pretty awesome and fun to mess around with sometimes, but it doesn't seem to be useful for much, and it makes it hard to walk around, so I shut it off and follow X out to the living room area.

"Dang, I gotta get me some shades," X says, noticing that Darius has just put on his sunglasses. "The Sun's pretty bright today."

"Check it out, guys," Minerva calls out, using her red soul to hover around. "I don't even have to walk anymore!"

"Well, yeah, as long as your battery doesn't run out," X points out.

"Well, I'm ready if you guys are," Erika announces.

We all exit the room again and head back to the elevator, Minerva still levitating as X presses the button for the ground floor.

"Minerva, the elevator's going to-" Erika starts to warn, right before the elevator starts moving and the ceiling hits Minerva's head.

"Ow! Dang it!" Minerva reacts, pushing off the ceiling with her arms.

"Okay, now you're going to have extra downward momentum when we stop, so brace yourself," Erika warns her again. Just as predicted, when the elevator stops, Minerva hits the floor, but lands perfectly this time.

"Aaaaand that is why we like gravity," X says.

"Shut up, my powers are still awesome," Minerva fires back, getting off the ground again.

"So...who's gonna be driving?" X asks as we walk outside (wow, the sun is bright today).

"I'll drive," Darius volunteers. "No offense, Erika, but my car looks slightly more awesome."

"None taken," Erika responds.

"But your car is still pretty nice," I add, feeling a little Kindness.

"Thanks."

"Okay, so where did you say this arcade was?" Darius asks X as we load into the car.

"Oh, it should be about a mile straight to the left," X answers. "We won't miss it."

Darius gets us out of the parking lot and starts driving in the direction we come from. "Alright, let's see what's up in this direction, then," he says.

"...Holy dang, I still cannot...freaking...believe...that we're actually here," X suddenly announces.

"I know, right?" I reply. "It's weird; it almost feels like we're at a convention or something, except this is an actual place where people live and everything is completely real and stuff."

"Which means we kinda have to act normal and stuff like everyone else, right?" X continues.

"Well, it's not like we're here illegally or anything," Minerva points out. "We're just a bunch of people here on vacation."

"Yeah, X, we'll be fine, don't worry," Darius assures. "Is this the arcade right here?"

"Yep, that's it."

"Dang, we could have walked here with it being this close," Darius comments. "Alright, let's go inside."

 **Darius**

After I lock the car, we all march straight into the front doors of the arcade. From what I can tell right off the bat, this is one of those places where you buy a game card, win tickets and trade them for prizes. And not only does this place have all the flashy lights and epic atmosphere you could ask for in a place, I can see at least as many monsters as humans here. And if I've learned anything from Undertale, it's that monsters are awesome.

"Hold on, I'm going to go see what kinds of games they have real quick," X says before running over to the games.

"Hey, let me know you meet any cool monsters!" I call out after him. Dang, I can't tell if he heard me. Guess I'll go buy myself a card.

I step ahead of the others to the front counter and purchase a card with ten dollars' worth of points of it; it won't get me much, but I'm here more to chill with monsters than to win loot off of games. Minerva buys herself a card, and then X comes sprinting back.

"Guys, they've got a Crossy Road machine here!" he says excitedly. "You know what this means? I'm gonna freaking profit!"

"Uh, I don't find that likely, X," Erika responds. "I mean, does it really pay out that much?"

"If you score high enough, yeah," X answers before stepping up to the counter and buying twenty-five dollars' worth of points for twenty dollars.

"Well, I guess I won't stop you from playing games at an arcade," Erika says as X runs back off to the games. "Actually, I should probably also look at the games before I spend any money."

"X, come on, wait for me!" Azalea calls out as she buys her card and runs ahead, leaving me and Minerva still standing around.

"So...what do you want to do first?" I ask her.

"Let's play some games," she answers. "Bet I can win more tickets than you."

"Alright, it's on, then. But you should know that the more awesome the thing, the better I am at it."

"Yeah, I knew that. That's why this is going to be fun."

With that, Minerva runs off to all those bright, flashy machines. Okay, so I may have used that last joke before, but sometimes that's what makes it funny. As for me, I find my way to the skee ball machines, which, as expected, are off in the corner.


	5. The Best Night of My Life

**For Your Information: This chapter is sort of long, due to a lot of character descriptions. Don't skip it though, because the plot starts to develop as well.**

* * *

After letting my mom know I'm leaving, I grab my smartphone, my wallet and my bike lock and step into garage to get my bike ready. And by that, I pretty much just mean pumping the tires; it's been a while since I've ridden my bike, so the tires need some more air. My brother's all set to close the garage door behind me, so with that, I get on and start racing off to Zeze's. With it being late February, it's pretty much already dark.

The restaurant/buffet is only about a mile from my house, so I should be able to make it in less than ten minutes, especially if I take a shortcut...through the church parking lot. I only have to cross one road, which is taking a minute, but not too long. Now I'm there, and...it's only 7:12? Dang, I'm fast. It was only 7:05 when I left. Well, guess I'll lock up my bike and hope that I'm not the only one who decided to get here early.

I go and stand a little closer to the sidewalk. Currently I'm wearing my favorite outfit: my white epicface shirt, my black and red drum line jacket, and jeans. I always wear my epicface shirt on Fridays, because that's one of the best days of the week. I'd wear it on Saturdays, but then I wouldn't get to show it off to people at school. My drum line jacket I wear every day of the week. Except on weekends, that's when it gets washed. Same with jeans (I usually wear sweatpants and my gray hoodie on weekends). My hair, as usual, looks boring as always.

After just a few minutes of waiting, I can already see Azalea riding down here at a leisurely pace. Azalea is pretty much my girlfriend, though we've never kissed...yet. Her skin is almost what I would call pale, she's about as skinny as I am, her face is beautiful, her voice is beautiful, her red hair is beautiful, her...crud I got off track right there.

Anyways, about Azalea's actual personality. She's really nice, though kind of shy sometimes. When she's not worrying about what others think of her (which she usually never does around me and the rest of the gang), though, she can get pretty energetic. She's probably the most positive in general of all of us.

"Hey Azalea!" I call out as she rides over to the streetlight to which my bike is locked.

"Hey X!" she responds, locking her pink bike next to my silver one. Today she also happens to be wearing _her_ favorite outfit: a white shirt, her purple jacket, and a purple skirt. Okay, yes, she did that on purpose.

She runs straight to me and gives me a quick hug. "I knew you'd be here early. Can't wait to eat, can you?"

"Nope, I'm freaking starving right now. I didn't have a big lunch or any snacks this afternoon." I say as we break our hug. "Gotta eat as much as possible here, right?"

"Yep, just don't get fat or anything!"

"I'm not gonna get fat. We'll burn off these calories during our dark run, right?"

"I hope; you wouldn't want me to get fat, would you?"

We both laugh at that for a second, and then hug each other again. From there, we stand around and talk about music and Undertale for a few minutes, before Minerva almost crashes into us at what looks like 20 miles per hour.

"YES! That's two in a row!" shouts Minerva as she steers into the parking lot. Minerva is is probably the most competitive person in the gang. It's not easy to hang out with her without her trying to make something a competition at least once. Thankfully, though, she's very fair and polite about it. She's also rather encouraging towards us whenever things are getting hard for us.

Apparently, she was racing Darius to the restaurant.

"Dang, girl, how much do you work out?" Darius calls out as he zooms past us about as fast as Minerva did. Darius has got to be the coolest of us all. When he tries, it's not hard for him to win people over to any cause he may have, though he's not always the smartest guy around. He would never cheat on Minerva or anything, though, even though they haven't been dating quite as long as Azalea and I have (which is about three months).

"Thirty minutes a day!" Minerva calls out, locking up her green bike. Looks like she changed into a green crop top since we got home from school today, but she's still wearing track pants. She shakes her long, black hair out of her face and walks over to where Azalea and I are standing.

Darius then locks his blue bike next to Minerva's and runs over here to catch up with her. He's wearing his epic black leather jacket, black shades, a black shirt that says "Like a boss" and dark jeans. "What's up, X, Azalea?" he asks. "We would have given you more alone time, but then Minerva wanted to race, so..."

"Oh, it's fine!" assures Azalea. "We were just talking about stuff."

"Like what?" Minerva asks.

"Undertale," I say.

"Well, can't say I blame you guys, that game is priceless," Darius says. "Like you, babe," he says to Minerva right before their lips meet for a kiss.

"Uh, buddy, we're sixteen and we're a out by a sidewalk," I remind him.

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that," Darius apologizes. "Anyways, we passed Erika on the way here. She was going kinda slowly but she should be here soon."

I look down the street, and sure enough, Erika's almost here on her red bike. I tend to see Erika as smartest person in the gang. She always uses her time and money wisely and thinks carefully before making a decision. She also has sort of a habit of answering questions completely honestly, no matter the circumstance. Though she's not the most social, and hardly ever talks to anyone outside of the gang. Today she has on a blue hooded coat, white gloves, and jeans.

"Hi Erika!" Azalea says as we all follow her over to the streetlight where she's locking her bike.

"Hi guys," Erika says. "Wait a minute; you guys don't look very warm. Aren't you guys afraid you're going to get cold tonight?"

"Oh... I guess I assumed that all the exercise we'd be getting tonight would warm up or something, and I don't want to get sweaty," I tell her.

"Your hands will get numb, but don't worry; I brought extra gloves." Erika says holding up a bunch of gloves she took from her coat pocket.

"Wow, thanks Erika," I say. "But we don't need those yet; it's time to eat now, right?" At that point, we're all walking towards the entrance to Zeze's Pasta and Pizza.

* * *

I call us "the gang," but technically we're more of a clique, I guess. We all started hanging out with each other in our neighborhood this last summer, and it turned out we were interested in similar video games and pastimes, though some of our values are slightly different. That's probably a good thing though; Erika helps us all do the responsible thing, Minerva keeps us going when things get difficult, Azalea cheers us up when we're losing morale (especially me), Darius makes any situation a little more interesting, and I, uh...I haven't quite figured out exactly why they like to keep me around. I have been called funny before, but that's only because I'm occasionally able to make a really good reference to a Vine, meme, or YouTube video.

That Undertale tho, you may or may not have noticed that I cannot shut up about it for long. As soon as school started back up after Christmas break, I'll admit that I practically forced my friends to play it. Undertale is made to be experienced, so you do not talk about it to anyone who hasn't played it yet. Except Undertale was all I wanted to talk about, so that meant they all had to play it first. It turns out, as I expected, they all loved it. Azalea beat it first, Minerva was the first to finish a genocide (besides me), Erika was shocked by its lack of archetypes, and Darius spent a while messing with the characters. They probably don't believe it actually happened like I do, yet somehow, Erika has never told me that yet. I find that amazingly kind of her.

So...Zeze's Pasta and Pizza. It's one of the best places in town to go out to eat in my opinion. You pay to get in, and from there you can fill up your plates with as much salad, pasta, and pizza as you could possibly eat. Which is exactly what we're going to do tonight.

"Okay, any ideas for deciding who goes in first?" I say as we wait in line to get in. "As much as I want to get us all in quickly, we're paying individually, so we need to figure out who goes first."

"Tag!" shouts Minerva suddenly. "We'll pay in order of placing at the end of the game."

"That's a good idea, but only four can play," says Erika. "But I'll volunteer to go third. You guys compete for first, second, fourth and last."

"Sounds fair," says Azalea, and we set ourselves up for a one-minute round of Tag on Minerva's phone while Erika holds it in place. Turns out Darius gets first, I'm second, Azalea comes in third, and Minerva ends up last.

"Well, looks like I at least win at something today," teases Darius.

"Shut up. It was only because you kept hiding under that stupid tree," Minerva retorts playfully.

"Guys, I think we're up," I say, pointing at the counter. Darius goes up to pay for his food and drink, and as soon as he's done I do the same (stupid inflation making this place cost forty cents more than it did last time).

From there, I proceed to the buffet to grab myself a big plate of salad with a little too much ranch dressing (that stuff is especially tasty here), a bowl of pasta with a little too much tomato sauce (that stuff is also really delicious), and two slices of pizza (which is delicious, but not as good as that of some places). Then I set my tray down at the booth where Darius set his and head over to the soda fountain to fill up my drink.

I am no longer able to refrain from digging straight into my salad, making sure ever bite is soaked in ranch dressing. By the time the rest of the gang is here with their food, I'm already done with my salad and my first piece of pizza.

"So, like I was about say to Azalea earlier," I start, "have you ever noticed that there might be something up with Undyne?"

"What makes you say that?" Darius asks.

"Well first of all, humans are supposed to be physically stronger than monsters, but Undyne's probably stronger than any human. Also, have you noticed that during a genocide, you take down Undyne in one hit, but she doesn't die, and instead transforms into a stronger form? And then she starts melting right before she actually dies?"

"I never played genocide," says Azalea.

"Huh. Never thought of that," says Erika. "Maybe she uses magic to give herself a strength boost or something?"

"Maybe, but that doesn't explain her refusal to die." I say. "It can't be Determination, because that would make her soul survive death, probably."

"Maybe one of those fanfictions will cover that eventually, X," Darius says, stuffing pizza in his mouth.

"Yeah, I guess, but they don't-" I suddenly stop taking as I notice someone sitting alone at a different table. Someone big, wearing some sort of black cloak that reminds me of the river person. I've seen this person before.

"Is something wrong, X?" Azalea says.

"Huh? No, it's just...have you ever noticed that guy right there?" I ask quietly.

"Not really, why? He looks like he's just here eating, like us,"

"Well, yeah, but...I think I've seen him before recently. This might be stupid, but I feel like he may be stalking me."

"That's not stupid, X. Don't worry, though, I don't think there's any reason for anyone to stalk you. You don't have a credit card, you never hurt anyone, you're fine."

"Yeah, I guess you're right, Azalea. But keep an eye out, alright? Even if he's not stalking us, nobody dresses like that. He may still be up to something."

"If it makes you feel better, I will," Azalea says right before going back to eating salad. Now I'm also getting back to eating all this deliciousness that we scored for ourselves.

Once I've finished everything, I go back to the buffet counter to make another bowl of pasta and another plate of salad. I go back and stuff all that down my gut, at which point I'm finishing just my first cup of soda. Now I go and get a refill and...crap, I was so hungry I forgot to pace myself! Instead of more pizza, I take a couple of brownies and a cinnamon roll for dessert, 'cause that's about all I can eat at this point.

We all start talking about Super Smash Bros stages for a minute until I finish eating.

"Well, I'm headed off to the game room, anybody wanna come?" I announce.

Darius and Azalea both choose to come with me, while Minerva and Erika, decide to stay back at the table. We run straight to our favorite thing in the game room: the coin pushing machine.

Last time I came here, I figured out how the machine makes money: any quarter that falls down one of two little slots on either side is gone forever. This time, I resolve to stop playing if I ever end up with any profits.

We each put in a quarter while Darius holds the button to stop the machine. After he lets go, two quarters come out.

"Okay, Darius, how're we deciding who gets these this time?" I ask, taking the quarters and putting them in a pocket separate from the rest of my money.

"Once we're done playing together, we'll see who can collect the most coins in a round of Subway Surfers," he suggests.

"Sounds fun!" Azalea says. I'd noticed before that if one person gets everything that doesn't divide evenly for a session, at least one person has a pretty good chance of profiting, even if the others lose money.

"Wait, a minute, I gotta go to the bathroom," says Darius. "You two have fun together for a minute."

Darius runs straight off to the bathroom. Wait a minute, is he trying to get me and Azalea to further our relationship or something? I mean, yeah, it's been three months and we still haven't kissed yet, but that's not because we don't love each other or anything, we're just...not up for that sort of thing. Especially not here.

"Uh, I actually need to use the bathroom too," Azalea says slowly. "Sorry."

"That's fine, I can hold our spot," I assure her. She walks off smiling at me.

Well, Darius's plan failed miserably. Assuming he had one.

Now I really want to try the machine myself, 'cause those quarters look really close to coming out, but I've only got five quarters left.

"Good night, sir," a quiet voice says.

I look to the left, and then I almost fall down backwards. That guy in black is standing right next to me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," they say as I start reaching for my phone.

"That's...fine," I barely manage to say. "You can...do the machine now if...you want..."

"I heard you and your friends talking about Undyne earlier," the mysterious person says.

"Oh...you like Undertale too?" I ask nervously, but slightly less nervously than I was a second ago.

"I also heard what you said about me," they say. "I'm a she, actually."

Okay, this...woman has definitely been stalking me.

"Sorry," I say quickly, freaking out again. "You have great hearing...ma'am..."

"Thank you," she says, her calm, quiet tone of voice not changing. "But listen, all I have to say is this: if you want your life to get a lot more interesting, meet me in Town Park at midnight. I promise you, you would regret not coming."

"Uh, okay...can I bring a friend?" I ask, thinking of Azalea.

"That would be a good idea. Farewell, friend," she says, leaving towards the exit.

Friend?! We are not friends, I don't even know who the heck she is! Also, what does Undyne have to do with anything? Is this lady going to show me Undyne's secret or something?

Well, Azalea is back, so I guess I can forget about what just happened for now.

"X? Is that person bothering you again?" Azalea asks worriedly.

"Actually...yeah, but she's gone now," I tell her.

"She? How do you know she's a girl?"

"I'll tell you later. We gotta finish with this machine if we wanna have time for the dark run." I say just as Darius gets back.

We didn't have that much luck, but Azalea ended up winning at Subway Surfers (which we played from my phone), so she's in the green at least.

From there, we go back to meet up with Minerva and Erika, who've been chatting with each other and drinking soda.

"You ladies ready for that dark run tonight?" Darius asks enthusiastically.

"Heck yeah," says Minerva, jumping up from her chair and grabbing Darius's hand.

"Actually," Erika says, "I just remembered a few minutes ago, I can't come with you guys on that tonight. I've got...something more important to attend to tonight."

"What?! Erika, we've been planning this for a month!" I almost yell. "I thought we all agreed that we were all free tonight!"

"Look, I'm really sorry, but I've just been informed that I need to be somewhere very important tomorrow morning, and I really need to make sure I get enough sleep tonight to be ready for it."

"...Alright, I'm sorry I overreacted. We'll be fine without you, you can go and get some sleep."

"It's fine, thanks. Here are your gloves," she says, handing us each a pair of gloves. "Just make sure to bring these back Monday morning alright?"

"Again, thanks for these. We darn well will bring them back. Good night!"

"Good night, guys!" With that, Erika puts on her coat and leaves.

I then look at the rest of us and smile. We may be one short, but we're still going to have a heck of a good time tonight.

* * *

 **Any guesses as to who this mysterious person might be? I know it's probably obvious what she is, but who, exactly?**

 **Next chapter, that dark run. In the woods. At night.**


	6. Mission Briefing

**Okay, this chapter is the longest thus far. Make sure you have ten minutes set aside to read it or something.**

 **Also, a quick disclaimer: I do not claim anything this story says about Toby Fox to be true in real life (though it'd be epic if it was).**

* * *

Holy crud, what happened last night? Oh, right: everything I've ever dreamed of.

When I got home, my bike was lying on my driveway, the back tire looking good as new.. _How the heck did it get there?_ I wondered. _Oh yeah, Knight Knight's been stalking me, so of course they know where I live. But when did they drop it off here?_ I decided not to question it and got to work carefully moving my bike and the baseball bat through the house and into to the garage; if I had opened the garage I would have woken someone up.

Now it's 9:00 AM on Saturday, and I'm just waking up. With all that happened last night, I think I'm going to go back to sleep for another hour or so. Maybe Azalea will show up in my dreams. Wait, did she already? She may have, but I can't tell. Oh well.

Nah, screw it. I can't sleep when I've got video games to play.

I go downstairs and...crud, my sister is on the PC already. Her turn should be over by the time I'm done eating breakfast.

I eat some toast and a miniature sausage biscuit for breakfast, and then go over to the computer. The rule is that we get thirty minute turns on the PC, Wii U, and DS, so I'm hoping my sister's turn is over now.

"Can I get on now?"

"No, I've only been playing for fifteen minutes."

Wait, so she had literally just gotten on when I came downstairs? That may not actually be bull, but it sure as heck feels like it. This is why I try to go out with my friends as much as possible. I grab my tablet and go back up to my room.

I share a room with my two brothers, so I'm lucky to be alone in here right now. I consider reading fanfictions, but that only makes it harder to wait for this afternoon. So instead I'm about to start watching fail compilations on YouTube, but then I remember something. If I'm going to working with those monsters, I should probably know a little more about them, so I'm going on the Undertale Wiki. Hey, they stalked me, so it's fair, right?

I start by looking up Knight Knight. Apparently her weapon is called Good Morningstar and if you sing to her enough, she falls asleep. That may or may not be helpful information.

Next is Final Froggit. The wiki says that Frisk spared him by "mystifying" him, but if you compliment him, his ATK drops, and if you threaten him, his DEF drops. Good intel.

I put in a search for Whimsalot. So not only did Frisk have to pray to spare him, but they also had to catch the green healing moths; hey, that means Whimsalot can do some healing magic. That's pretty cool.

Now for Astigmatism. Something I didn't know is that challenging him let Frisk spare the other monsters. The wiki makes him sound mean, but last night he didn't seem too bad. Maybe he's gotten a little less selfish over the last several months or so.

Well, that's done and over for now, so I think I'll watch some fail compilations to take my mind off the subject. Haven't seen many of those lately.

By lunch time, I'm having a little asthma from constantly laughing, but it's never anything serious. I go downstairs to eat lunch; Mom's also there in the kitchen, so only now do I realize that I forgot to tell her about our plans for today. But of course I can't tell her what I'm actually up to.

Let's see...I can't tell her I'm going to Azalea's because I could just walk there, and Erika's driving us. The parks are still too close; we could ride our bikes there.

The mall. That's it. We would drive there to hang out.

"Mom?" I say. "Erika's taking me to the mall at 3:00, if that's alright."

"The mall? Didn't you just eat out last night?"

"Well yeah, but I'm not planning on spending much money. We're mostly just going there to hang out, maybe find something we might want to buy later."

"Alright, but I want your chores done before you go."

"Alright, fine."

Like I mentioned earlier, it's my week to clean the kitchen, so I have to wait until everyone else is done with lunch before I start. Unfortunately, by the time I'm done, it's only 2:00, so I have to kill another hour before it's time to go. I end up spending that time playing Super Smash Bros. against my brother and his friend over the Internet, until the doorbell rings.

I head over to the front door to open it, and there's Erika, wearing a blue T-shirt and jeans.

"Hey X, ready to go?" she greets.

"Yeah, just a second," I reply, running to grab my phone. "See you later!" I call out to the whole house as I close the door behind me and get into the front seat of Erika's mom's blue car, which is parked in our driveway.

Erika is probably my closest friend, besides Azalea. She lives on my street, so we've known each other since middle school, and the only reason we didn't meet sooner is because she didn't live here before then. I was the first, and for a while, the only person she ended up becoming friends with in our neighborhood, until we met Azalea, Darius, and Minerva, in that order. They'd been going to school with us for a while, but we never really got to know them until last summer.

Erika drives through the neighborhood until we get to Darius's house; Minerva's apparently been hanging out there too. I hang out in the car while Erika brings them out.

"So where are we going again?" Darius asks.

"Oh, X, Azalea and I met some people that we think you guys should also meet," Erika says. "They're kind of a big deal but not in the way that you'd expect. We're going over to their apartment."

"You guys sure this is safe?" Minerva asks.

"Don't worry, they would never do anything to us," I tell them. "We're a little too important to them for that."

"Why, are we their biggest fans or something?" Darius asks. "Wait, I know: it's Toby Fox, isn't it?"

"No, but in a way, you're close," I reply. "You'll see when we get there."

Darius and Minerva also live on the same street and have gone to school with me for a while, but it wasn't until last summer when our whole gang was formed until they started hanging out. From what I can tell, they didn't develop feelings for each other until about the time Azalea and I started dating, but then they ended up making out on their first date, and even now I feel like we're lucky that they've never done anything more than that...at least as far as I know.

It takes us about seven minutes to get to the group of small apartment building where our new monster friends(?) live. I quickly get out of the car, eager to learn some cool new stuff about magic and souls.

"Wait, guys," Erika says once we're all out. "I want to show you all something before we go in. Watch me closely."

Erika closes her eyes and appears to be mentally focusing on something. After about ten seconds, her soul flickers on for a second.

"...Is that what I think it is?" Minerva asks, looking uneasy.

"How the heck did you manage to do that?" I ask.

"I'll explain that later. Let's go now," Erika says, and we follow her up to the apartment that was given to us.

"Alright guys, try not to freak out too much," I tell Darius and Minerva as Erika knocks on the door.

We wait for about twenty seconds, which may as well have been five minutes (MONSTERS ARE AWESOME).

Finally, Astigmatism opens the door. "Hurry up and get inside," he says.

"WHAT THE ****?! MONSTERS ARE REAL AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?!" Minerva screams at me.

"Wait, what-" Darius takes another look at the eye monster peeking through the door. "I'm dreaming. But I sure as heck don't want to wake up now!"

"Look, I'll explain once we're inside," I tell them. "Just come on in."

We all quickly shove ourselves through the barely opened door, and Astigmatism shuts it as soon as we're all inside the apartment.

"Okay, I'm sorry I didn't explain the situation earlier, but if I told you we had met monsters, you would have thought that I was fanboying and making stuff up," I explain. "And Darius, you're not dreaming." I punch him in the shoulder.

"Did you have to scream like that?!" Astigmatism demands. "Someone's gonna find us!"

"Oh yeah, and we can't let anyone else know that there are monsters in town," I add.

"Quiet, please and thank you!" says an armless monster sitting on the couch next to Whimsalot, wearing a wizard hat and a strange, curly, purple outfit. I recognize him as Madjick; and his speaking is making my head hurt a little.

"Oh, welcome to our base of operations, humans!" Whimsalot greets. "I forgot you guys haven't met Madjick. It can take some time to get used to being around him, but he's the one who brought your bike home, so respect that."

"Oh, thanks," I say to him. He just goes back to watching TV. Apparently they're watching...Steven Universe? Well, I guess it is a pretty good show, and the gems are kind of like monsters in more ways than one.

"Final! Reaper! The humans are here!" Whimsalot calls out, turning off the TV. A bedroom door opens and Final hops out along with a really tall, skinny bird-looking monster with its head spinning back and forth vertically. I didn't know they brought Reaper Bird here.

"WShoatth'essuepa,rheutmhaenhsu?mans you were talking about," Reaper Bird says. Final makes a noise that sounds like "robbit" in response.

"Oh no, not that thing," Minerva says, stepping backwards.

"LJiuksetyboeuccaaunsfeiIn'dmafbuestetdetrolgoeotkhienrgdaomeaslng'atmmaetaen I can't hear," Reaper Bird says back.

"" Minerva yells.

"What did you say about my sister?" Astigmatism says.

Final woofs.

"Calm down, guys." Whimsalot tells everyone. "Humans, this is Reaper Bird, an amalgamate consisting of my twin brother, Final's younger brother, and Astigmatism's older sister. They're still figuring out how to talk one at a time, so they're a bit hard to understand right now."

"Well, it's great that they're doing alright," I say. "Uh, where's Knight Knight?"

"She sleeps during the day," says Whimsalot. "Don't worry too much about waking her up though, she's got music playing in her room, and it's pretty hard to wake her up without turning it off."

"How many of you guys are there? And how long have you been here?" Darius asks.

"Well, it looks like there's six of them: Madjick, Knight Knight, Final, Whimsalot, Astigmatism, and Reaper Bird," I answer.

"And we've only been around here for a week or so," Astigmatism says. "And like we said earlier, we're only here to find a certain someone."

"Right, it's about time we told you what's going on," says Whimsalot. "But first, I should explain a little more about us. You should probably find a seat though, it'll take some time."

"This sounds interesting," I comment, sitting down on the couch. Darius and Minerva sit at the table over in the dining room, and Erika leans against the wall (there aren't many places to sit).

Whimsalot starts hovering, Astigmatism taking his place on the couch. "Back in the Underground, Final, Astigmatism and I lived in the capital. Our fathers were on the Royal Guard, specifically they were Guards 03, 04, and 05, so our lives were pretty good. Then one day, the human with the green soul came to the Underground. Some how, they managed to get through Waterfall without ever getting spotted by Undyne, which none of the other humans had ever done, apparently. When he got to Hotland, though, Guards 01 through 05 engaged him in combat. They were eventually defeated and their soul was taken, but our fathers died in that fight."

"Oh...that must have been horrible," I tell the monsters.

"I'm not done yet. A few months later, the human with the yellow soul showed up. They managed to escape from Undyne by injuring her, but she continued to chase them down. Then our siblings, the ones who currently make up Reaper here, decided to fight them in front of MTT Resort to avenge our fathers. They hastily almost killed them all with their weapon, which I think was a gun, but then Undyne caught up and struck him down before he could go any further.

"At that point, our siblings weren't dead, but they were dying. I tried to heal them, but they wouldn't wake up. We were convinced that they were going to die when King Dreemurr let us know to send all dying monsters to the new Royal Scientist, Dr. Alphys. So, we brought her our dying siblings, hoping that she would be able to save them somehow. After about a week-"

"Let me guess," I say, "Alphys called and said that they were okay, but then you never heard from her or any of them again."

"Wow, Knight Knight really did find the right humans. Yes, that's exactly what happened. Eventually our mothers fell down, not having much hope for life anymore now that their families were half dead. We didn't send them to Dr. Alphys though, since she never brought back our siblings. So then we decided that we were going to really avenge our families this time. But we didn't try to join the Royal Guard; we didn't trust them anymore, since they didn't seem to know how to handle such situations without letting innocent people die. So we teamed up with Madjick and Knight Knight, two of the strongest monsters we knew outside of the Royal Guard, and devoted all of our time to training ourselves to fight. We quit our jobs and devoted all of our time to practicing our battle techniques. We started calling ourselves the Shadow Guard, because nobody really knew about us."

"That's a pretty cool name, I guess," Darius says.

"After about two years, we were all not doing so well in terms of keeping ourselves going. That was when the final human with the red soul, now known as Frisk, appeared in the Underground. We heard that this human made it all the way to Hotland without hurting a single person, and had even made friends with Undyne. Then we heard that they were constantly appearing on Mettaton's TV shows, where the show starts off normal, but turns out to be a death trap for the human, who always ends up getting saved by Dr. Alphys somehow. At that point, we all positioned ourselves outside MTT Resort and got ready to fight the human there, but then Mettaton himself showed up and said he'd pay us 200 Gold each to wait in the Core to kill the human and give him their soul. We agreed to his offer, because we didn't want to get on Mettaton's bad side, but we planned on actually taking the soul to the king so he could free us all.

"We split up and attacked the human as they encountered us, but they kept singing Knight Knight to sleep, and Madjick seemed to really like them for some reason. Then after Final and I took our turn and saw what an amazingly kind and thoughtful person this human was, even we didn't really want to kill them. Astigmatism somewhat forcefully convinced us to take another shot at them, but then they refused to surrender to him, something none of us had ever done before. We all left the Core then and got ready to disband.

"Several hours later though, we ran into Dr. Alphys with our siblings, who were melted together into one being. Alphys said that the human had named them Reaper Bird, so we decided to call them that, and stay together as well. Then, on that same day, we heard that the barrier had somehow been destroyed, even though that last human was still alive. As we went out to the surface world, we resolved that the Shadow Guard would never again hurt an innocent person...and instead go after much less innocent people."

"So let me get this straight," Erika says. "You guys are a team of mercenaries called the Shadow Guard who hunt down criminals?"

Final nods in response.

"You may have heard of some of our work," Whimsalot says. "Have you guys watched the news lately?"

"Uh, not really, why, did you guys do something cool?" Minerva replies.

"Yeah we did!" Astigmatism says. "We've been everywhere, taking out anyone who kills or attacks anyone!"

"What makes our captures newsworthy, though, is that nobody ever knows who does it, and the prisoners sometimes end up freaking out to the police about monsters and magic, which most people don't believe exist," Whimsalot explains.

"Why can't you monsters just reveal yourselves to the world?" Darius asks.

"Well, as you probably know, humans can be pretty terrible," Whimsalot answers. "If the world knew monsters existed, someone would definitely come to wipe us all out. So we told every human we met to keep monsters a secret, or a myth at the most, which has gone pretty well so far."

"Wait a minute," Erika asks. "Aren't you guys from a video game? How do you even exist?"

"That's a good question," Whimsalot responds. "Soon after we monsters left the underground, we met a human named Toby Fox, who had a brilliant idea to integrate us into the world. He said that anyone who experienced what Frisk did couldn't help but love monsters, so he got us all to help him and his team of programmers create a video game about Frisk's adventure. It took about a few years, and the game isn't that famous yet, but people seem to love it so far."

"It's really entertaining, and it makes us feel like we're actually there," I comment.

"But after Undertale was released," Whimsalot continues, "it seems that more humans started trying to kill each other, and have even killed a few monsters. We've never played it, but it apparently teaches about how killing people gives you EXecution Points, which makes your Level Of ViolEnce, or LOVE, go up, and that in turn makes you stronger, harder to kill, and harder to be around in general. So now there are more serial killers around than there used to be. Fortunately, none of them have ever become powerful enough to overpower local forces of justice."

"Thank goodness," I say. "I've heard that LV 20 is the maximum LOVE a person could have, which means that something pretty bad could probably happen if someone got that high."

"That's right," Whimsalot says. "And that's why we need to do anything we can to stop that from happening. And at this point, we're going to need you humans to help us with that."

"Wait, wait," Minerva says. "You want us to help you track down serial killers?"

"It's actually worse than that. Have you heard of Chara?"

"Yeah, they were the first human to fall into the Underground," I answer.

"Well, there seems to be a cult of some sort bent on killing absolutely everyone in the world. From what we've heard, they seem to be doing this for Chara. But now that doesn't make any sense based on what you just said."

"Well, I don't actually understand how it works, but in Undertale, you are given the option to do things Frisk would never do, including murdering nearly every monster in the Underground. If you do that, Chara somehow comes back to life, destroys the game and won't let you start over or do anything until you give them your soul. Like I said, I really don't get this stuff, but my point is that Chara is probably the worst person you could ever imagine, due to the fact that they want to kill everyone."

"Wow...I'll have to ask you more about this later, X. But anyways, we tracked one member of this cult down to this very town, and we'd take care of him ourselves, but we're way too far away from Ebott City, and we can't risk getting found out by anyone. Except you guys, of course."

"This sounds really dangerous," Erika says. "How much do we know about this person?"

"Well," Whimsalot answers, "his name's Mason Richards, he's somewhere in this town and he's subtly trying to get people to join him. We'll need you guys to find out the rest."

"Uh, and how the heck are we supposed to do that without getting ourselves killed?" Minerva demands.

"It won't be that bad. We'll have you go and spy on some of his associates, hopefully to find out where he's staying or what he's planning to do next. But right now we don't exactly know who's working with him, so we'll have to get back to you on that."

"Alright, that'll work," I say. "Anyways, it looks like we're all briefed. I told my parents that I'd be at the mall, so she's not expecting me to be home for some time. Do you guys mind if we stay for a few hours?"

"Not at all," Whimsalot responds. "As you can see, we'll be a little packed, but we'd enjoy being around humans more."

"Nice!" Minerva expresses. "What kinds of video games you guys got?"

"WSeodrorny',twheahvaedatnoyleave them all back home," Reaper Bird says.

"But we have internet!" Madjick says, making me feel weird.

"Sweet!" Darius says. "X, you brought your phone, right? I still gotta upload that video to YouTube."

"Yep, I'll email it to you. What's the wifi password?"

The time we spent hanging out at the Shadow Guard's apartment turned out to be pretty fun. I showed them all my favorite fail compilation and some Studio Z videos, which everyone loved. I ended up finding out that Madjick, Whimsalot and Astigmatism worked for Mettaton back home, while Final, Knight Knight and Reaper Bird worked for Muffet, both of those businesses going pretty well, despite not being able to expand much. And by the time we had to leave, they all promised they'd play Undertale when they went back home, and we planned for Darius ans Minerva to train with them in Town Park at midnight, after convincing them that it was completely safe. We even exchanged phone numbers so we could contact each other when necessary.

When I get home, I look up Madjick and Reaper Bird. So, Madjick's orbs can be weakened by staring at them, and Reaper bird attacks with some magical manifestation called Everyman? I guess I didn't quite remember as much about these specific monsters as I thought I did.

* * *

 **For Reaper Bird's dialogue, I took two sentences and alternated characters from each, so if you read every other letter, you can still tell what's being said.**

 **Since this is my first fanfiction, I'd love it you if you guys would take a minute to leave a review to let me know what you think. So far, it looks like you guys like it, but it still helps to see that you guys keep enjoying this stuff. Thanks so much for reading this longest chapter yet!**

 **Next time, the gang goes back to school, but things have definitely changed for them...**


	7. Filled With Justice

**Nothing much to say here, let's just get into it.**

* * *

Yeah, I go to church on Sundays. But honestly, even though it may be my own fault, it's really not any fun for me. I never do anything outside of church that I should be doing, like reading the scriptures, so I hardly ever know any of the scripture stories that are referred to during Sunday school. This week it's a little different though: now that I know for sure some of the existential properties of a human being, I'm starting to wonder more than usual how much of this stuff is true. I've heard the word soul used here before, but not exactly the way I know it. And the scriptures never mention monsters...but then again history books don't either. But history books don't talk much about the things that happen in the scriptures.

Well, church is over, which is good, because I really don't want to think about that anymore. Now it's time to take care of something I totally forgot about yesterday. I go up to my room and text Erika: _How did you manage to activate your soul without magic yesterday?_

About ten minutes later, I get messaged back: _I thought about how it felt to have my soul out and tried to think and feel that way again. I tried to fill myself with Integrity, so to speak._

That makes a lot of sense when she puts it that way. I guess now that our souls have been activated before, it's possible to activate them ourselves now? Let's see if I can do that now. My soul is Justice, so think I should be able to make that work.

I think about how great the world would be if everyone did what they should and took only what they deserved...This doesn't seem to be working. I'll keep trying for a few minutes. Now I'm thinking what a difference it would make if I treated everyone fairly and helped others do the same (not that I don't already do that)...

There it is. It's been five minutes but I've done it. Can I shoot yellow Justice bullets? Crud, but I don't want to break anything!

Dang it, it's gone. I don't want to waste another five minutes now that I know I can potentially activate my soul on my own. I'll work on that later; right now I wanna watch YouTube.

* * *

Finally, it's Monday again. I walk up to the bus stop early in the morning, Erika and Azalea already being there. Wait, doesn't Azalea go to that other bus stop? Whatever, I like this better anyway.

"Hey folks," I say.

"X!" Azalea says, running over to me and giving me a huge hug.

"Been a while, hasn't it?" I remark.

"It has!" she says back. "Now you have to tell me everything that happened on Saturday!"

"Okay, but maybe we should get on the bus first," I tell her as the bus drives up to our stop. We all get on the bus and sit in our respective seats, though I almost forget that I shouldn't sit with Azalea. Then I give Azalea a crash course on the Shadow Guard and what they want us to do for them.

"They want us to catch this man?" she asks. "How are we going to do that without getting hurt?"

"They mostly just want us to spy for them," I explain. "These guys are experienced, so we should be fine. Anyways, how was basic training?" I ask Darius and Minerva, who had boarded the bus not long after the rest of us had.

"Freaking awesome," Minerva says. "I've got a red soul, so I can float around! Only when it's glowing, unfortunately."

"And my soul is orange, which apparently lets me run really fast," Darius says. "Wish we didn't need magic to do this stuff..."

"Bravery and Determination, huh?" I remark. "Can't say I would have expected anything much different. And it should be possible to make your soul light up, you just need to be filled with the corresponding trait somehow. Remember when Erika did it a few days ago?"

"Oh yeah, that's pretty cool," Darius says. "You were filled with Determination somehow?"

"It's Integrity, and yes, but I'd been practicing all morning," Erika explains. "It's not easy to activate your soul at will, especially if you've never done it before."

"I pulled it off last night," I say. "I'm not sure if we can use our abilities that way though. We just need to work on it some more until we master it, and then, well, then things will be awesome."

"Heck yeah they will!" Minerva says.

"So, how exactly do you do it?" Azalea asks me.

"Well, you're Kindness, so you could focus on how great it is to be nice to people, maybe?" I tell her.

"Alright, I'll try that," she says.

"Okay, everyone try to stay quiet so she can focus," I say to my friends.

Azalea leans back in her seat and closes her eyes, almost looking like she's sleeping. She looks cute when she's sleeping. Scratch that, she always looks cute. After about three minutes, I see a green heart slowly light up on her chest.

"Did it work?" she asks, leaning forward again as her soul fades. "That felt really nice."

"Yep, it did," I answer. "It took me longer than that to do it, though. You must have more Kindness in you than I have Justice."

"Hey Erika, can you show her yours?" Minerva asks.

"I guess," Erika responds. She closes her eyes for about fifteen seconds, until her blue soul appears and disappears.

"Wow, how are you so good at it?" Azalea asks.

"Like I said, I've been practicing," Erika says. "I can never manage to maintain it for more than a second, though. My mind keeps wanting to think about other things."

"We'll get the hang of it eventually," I say as our bus driver dismisses us.

* * *

For first period, I have band, but the percussion director is never here in the morning on Mondays, so we usually end up just messing around in the percussion room for 45 minutes. The other percussionists are pretty cool people when you get down to it, but the things that they joke around about when our director isn't here make me almost wish he was. They think I'm pretty funny for the comic timing of my soundboard app, though.

Second period is when Erika, Darius and I have English together. Nothing interesting today, just analyzing a painting. Then chemistry in third period with Minerva and Erika, Spanish in fourth period with Azalea; now things get crazy.

Is Trent looking at Azalea again? That guy's been subtly trying to hook up with her for weeks now. Doesn't he realize she's taken? Well, most other people don't seem to realize it either, since we try to avoid any amount of PDA in school.

Well, our Spanish teacher's pretty cool, so hopefully there won't be any trouble today...oh wait, he left the room. We may or may not have a problem.

Trent had a girlfriend a few months ago, but he dumped her after they did some things they shouldn't have and ended up having to face the consequences, which he left with her. No, I am not going into detail on that, there may be kids reading this. Anyways, he obviously wants Azalea for the wrong reasons, so it's a good thing she's taken. And that she doesn't like him. But that's not stopping him from telling her an offensive pickup line right in front of me. He's never done that before.

"Uh...sorry, I'm not available..." Azalea responds quietly, looking away from Trent.

"Of course you are, girl!" he says. "Now why don't we go to my house later so-" I interrupt him by grabbing his shoulder, the thought of the difference between me and him in the way we handle females filling me with Justice. "Hey buddy, what are you doing?" I ask him.

"Trying to pick up a chick, why?" he says.

"Do you know who she is?"

Trent says something about Azalea that I refuse to quote.

"I said _who,_ not what. She is the nicest person I know, and you can't just "take her home" if you can't even appreciate that about her."

"I did it last time. What's different now?"

"First of all, she's taken."

"By who?"

"Me." At this point, my soul is clearly visible, but Trent seems too distracted by both what I just said and Azalea to notice. Azalea sees it and her face lights up for a split second, before Trent grabs her shoulder and gets right in my face, or should I say right above my face, since he's about eight inches taller than I am.

"You ****ing liar. You don't have a chance with girls." Then he says something about me that is both a huge exaggeration and definitely not T-rated.

"You know nothing about having a girlfriend. Now you will leave Azalea alone because she does not deserve to be abused by you, or I will make you leave her alone." At this point my soul is glowing brighter than it normally does.

"I would love to see you try and **** with me."

"Okay. Azalea, stand back." Azalea throws Trent's hand off her shoulder and hops over a few rows of desks. "But before we start, I need to ask you something. Have you ever played Undertale?"

"No, da**q does that have to do with anything?"

"Good."

 **{Stop music}**

With a flash of yellow light, I fire a huge blast of Justice straight from my soul into Trent's chest at point blank range, knocking me backward a little but knocking Trent back much harder. He crashes into the wall behind him and flops on the floor, moaning in pain. I stand up, and notice that my soul is gone...and that the room has quieted down and everyone is staring at me.

I probably should not have used my soul power in front of my whole class.

 **{Start "Dating Fight!"}**

Luckily, the bell is ringing now, so I grab my stuff and Azalea and I sprint for the door before anyone can question what just happened.

"Thanks for helping me out back there," Azalea says as we speed walk down the hall. "That was amazing."

"You're welcome, and thanks, but I'm feeling kind of tired right now. Can we slow down?"

"Sure, but we need to get away from anyone who saw that."

My eyes widen. "Holy crap, I just realized what I just did."

"Don't worry, with any luck, nobody will understand what happened well enough to tell any staff about it."

At this point, we are the first people to get to our World History classroom, Darius coming in a little sooner than I would have expected.

"Did you guys see how much people were freaking out in the hallways over here?" he asks us. "What happened?"

"Yeah, long story short, I got filled with too much Justice and now we gotta act like we have no idea what happened because nobody should know what happened," I quickly say to him.

"Wait, what? It's been four hours and you did something everyone saw?"

"Look, Azalea may or may not have been violated or something if I didn't do anything and it was really awesome and I was mad and I just had to try that because this is still new and cool to me and now we're all screwed!"

"X, calm down, you don't want to call more attention to yourself," Azalea says.

I can never argue with her. "Okay, so we may or may not have our cover blown, just go with any rumor you hear about a futuristic gadget or something," I say quietly.

I try to forget what just happened, but nobody else will let me. A few people in my Spanish class know my name, so some people who know who I am start asking me about what the heck happened in my Spanish class. I tell people that I don't know what happened any better than anyone else does, and that people probably assumed Trent and I had something to do with it because we were in an argument in the center of the room. But that of course doesn't make a dent in the rumors that I had superpowers or used the Force or something. Well, now that sixth period is over, I just gotta last through lunch and two elective classes and then we should be home free.

"Okay, let me get this straight; someone was bothering Azalea, and that filled you with Justice and then it all exploded out on him?" Erika says, sitting down at the lunch table across from me and Azalea. "That is just...intriguing."

"It felt really cool," I say. "But as you can probably tell, people saw it happen. Our teacher wasn't in the room, though."

"Good, if no teacher saw it, no teacher should believe it. But how were you able to do something so big like that? I thought all the yellow soul could do was shoot those tiny bullets."

"Well, Frisk could do way more than just levitate, right? They could also reset, and their health was restored every time they were filled with determination. Maybe pure, natural soul essences are more powerful than those produced by magic."

"That makes sense...but you've been in situations that demanded justice before, haven't you? Why do your soul powers only work now?"

"I guess we needed magic to get our souls working in the first place, but now that that's done, we don't necessarily need magic for that anymore."

"That could be how humans supposedly used magic before the monsters were banished underground, right?"

"Yeah, maybe the barrier was some sort of giant, one-way Kindness shield or something..." I look over at Azalea, and then back at Erika. "We need to do some more experimenting. Can you guys make another midnight?"

"Yeah, if I get my homework done and go to sleep soon enough," Erika replies. "How about you guys?"

"If X will be there, I'm definitely coming," Azalea answers. Yep, we're made for each other.

"I am," I say. "Let me make sure the Shadow Guard will be there too. I'm going somewhere less noisy to call them, be right back."

I step off to a front hallway containing bathrooms and water fountains, unlock my phone, and put in the monsters' home phone number. After about a ring and a half, someone picks up.

"HHeelllloo?"

"Hey, this is X," I say. "Uh, to whom am I speaking?"

"TRheiaspiesrR,eoabpveiroBuisrldy," says the person on the line.

"Oh, hey buddy. Listen, my friends and I are wondering, are you guys available to meet us at the park at midnight again for some practice and experimentation with our human souls?"

"SYueraeh,,bbuuttsnoomteaolfluosfwuisll have to stay back just in case."

"Oh, okay, that's fine. What's going on tonight?"

I hear some muffled speaking through the phone, and then it stops.

"Hey X, this is Whimsalot. Sorry, I had to finish eating lunch. What do you need?"

"Well, I was asking if you guys were available tonight at midnight, because I wanna try to figure some stuff out, maybe experiment with soul power, and it would help to have some of you around to make that work..."

"Well, Knight Knight and I are going to be busy doing recon tonight, and we need someone guarding the apartment at all times, but I think Astigmatism and Reaper Bird can come. Town Park again?"

"Yeah, sounds perfect. I'll tell you if we learn anything cool. Also, let us know when you need us to do anything for you guys."

"Alright. See you!"

"Bye."

* * *

"Okay, so you guys can all make it tonight, right?" I ask the gang as the bus starts off to take us home. Everyone lets me know they're on board with the plan for tonight.

"Alright, great. Don't forget to bring a weapon, just in case."

That evening, I tell my mom I've extra tired and go to bed immediately after dinner; it is still a school night after all. I tape my watch to my head again (not quite as close to my ear as it was last time) and go to sleep. There's quite a few things I want to try and test out tomorrow...I just hope Azalea will be willing to do this.

* * *

 **Well, human souls always were stronger than monster souls. Of course, that tends to result in the powers of a human soul being harder to use sometimes.**

 **Next time, more theories on the history of humans, monsters, magic and souls, as well as a possible action scene!**


	8. The Big Barrier Theory

**Ready to learn some cool stuff? This will be fun.**

* * *

I slowly close the front door behind me. It's hardly even chilly outside tonight (that's Texas weather), so I'm only wearing my jacket over my shirt. I've still got a baseball bat, since going out at night is still dangerous. I walk on over to the outside of the neighborhood where Azalea and Erika are waiting for me.

"Hi X!" Azalea says. "Ready to mess around with our cool new superpowers?"

"Heck yeah," I respond. "Not sure these count as superpowers though, anyone should be able to do this stuff..."

"So what sorts of things were you thinking of working on tonight?" Erika asks as we start heading west.

"I'll tell you guys when we get there," I answer. "When everyone is here."

After a few minutes, we run into Darius and Minerva...who appear to be engaged in romantic activity. We wait a minute for things to get less...intense between them, before getting closer to them.

"Hey, you two!" I call out. "Enjoying the night so far?"

"Yep, pretty much," Darius answers. "Hard to not enjoy anything I do with her."

"Ready to go?" Erika says.

"Yeah, let's do this!" Minerva replies, at which point we all get going again.

"Uh...which monsters did you say would be there tonight?" Erika asks me.

"Astigmatism and Reaper Bird."

"Oh..." Erika says. She seems sort of...disappointed.

"Wait, Reaper Bird is coming?" Azalea asks. "They sort of freak me out..."

"Don't worry, they're pretty friendly, you just need to listen to them closely, because they always say two things at once," I assure her.

"They weird me out too," Minerva comments. "The way their head keeps flipping around like that..."

We get pretty lucky with the crosswalk tonight; the walk signal is on almost as soon as we press the button. Once we cross, Minerva takes off sprinting without warning, and we have to run to catch up with her, which I honestly would rather not do, considering we're already up at midnight on a school night. At this speed, we make it to the park not a minute later. Astigmatism and Reaper Bird are hanging out in the pavilion.

"Hey, dudes!" Darius says as we approach them. "How've you been?"

"PFrientet,yhgoowoadb,oIugtuyeosus?" Reaper Bird says.

"It's a long walk here from the apartment," Astigmatism says. "How do you think I'm feeling?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that, we'll meet closer to your place next time," I say. "Why don't we head down to the theater so we can get started tonight?"

We all step down the stairs down the middle of the seating area to get to the stage.

"Okay, so we've found out that we can summon our soul powers without magic, but we need to be in the right mindset to do so. Like Darius would need to be feeling really confident that he can face his adversary, and that might fill him with Bravery. But it seems that when we use the essences straight from our own souls like that, we can become even more powerful than what we would get from magic; we just need magic to get us started so we can use those abilities in the future.

"Take, for example, what happened earlier today. I got filled with a whole lot of Justice, and then when it all exploded out on someone, it hit him so hard he nearly passed out. And there was a time you may or may not have heard of when Frisk was filled with so much Determination that they couldn't be killed by even the most powerful being to ever live. There's not much telling what else we may be able to do if we manage to bring out enough of our essences."

"So why did we have to come?" Astigmatism asks.

"Well, that got me thinking, you know how humans supposedly used magic to relate the barrier? That got me thinking: what if they just used their soul power? Astigmatism, would you mind activating our souls real quick?"

"Fine," he says. He brings out one of his bouncy orbs, and our souls light up.

"Finally!" Minerva shouts as she starts floating above the ground.

"Wait!" I call out. "Before we start messing around with our powers, I need to try something." Minerva slowly starts moving downwards. "Azalea, could you hold up your shield?" She does so.

I reach out to touch the blue square, and my hand passes right through; wait, it looks like my hand is also making a small hole in it.

"Oh...X, could you...stop that, please?" Azalea says, sounding like she's somewhere between sick and in pain.

"Oh, sorry," I say, jerking my hand back. "Now Astigmatism, you touch it. Don't worry, Azalea, this time you shouldn't feel anything."

Astigmatism walks up to Azalea and touches the shield, making it turn red for a second...before his hand flies right off of it.

"Ow! What did you do to this thing!?" Astigmatism shouts.

"Remember?" I explain. "That shield destroys magic, which is what you're made of."

"You said it wouldn't hurt!"

"I said Azalea wouldn't feel it. I never said you wouldn't."

"Whatever, I am not doing that again."

"That's fine, you don't have to." I turn back to the others. "So, I, a human, can pass through the shield, but Astigmatism, a monster, can't. And the other night, when I threw a bullet at her shield, it sort of broke it for a second. This shield is probably exactly the same as the barrier."

"Oh, you're right!" Erika says. "Both the barrier and the shield took the same power to destroy them as they took to create them, and it probably takes a little more than a seventh of what was used to create them to pass through."

"So, my point is, humans probably never used magic; it was soul power all along."

"Okay, so now can we do more cool stuff?" Minerva asks. "Ah, come on, why isn't it working?"

"Hey, could you guys get our souls going again?" Darius asks, noticing that they're gone.

A few moths fly from Reaper Bird's head.

"Whoo!" Minerva shouts, floating upwards again with her red soul.

"Hey Minerva, how high can you go?" Azalea calls out to her.

"Pretty high, but if I go too high I'll lose my powers and probably die," she shouts back.

"And Darius, you have increased speed, right?" Erika asks.

"Yep, check this out." Darius runs all the way to the other end of the park and back in about eight seconds (Town Park isn't that big but that's still pretty fast).

"Wow, that's like as fast as a car!" Azalea says. "X, can I see your Justice bullets again?"

"Sure," I say as I throw a yellow energy bolt into the railing at the side of the seating area, making a loud BANG and putting a small dent in it.

"Dang, I gotta be more careful where I am those."

Right then, I notice a red car with a black, horizontal stripe out on the road slowing down as it approaches the park. I look back at Astigmatism and Reaper Bird, who seem to be frozen in fear.

"OWhhnaot's he doing here?" Reaper Bird says.

"EVERYBODY HIDE!" Astigmatism yells. "IT'S RICHARDS!"

* * *

 **Suspenseful, huh? I wasn't originally planning to end this chapter here, but if I didn't, it would probably take until Saturday to finish. Speaking of Saturday, that's when Spring Break starts for me, so expect updates a little more often then.**

 **Next chapter, the gang, a tough monster, and an amalgamate are under attack by a serial killer!**


	9. Masked Gunman

**Again, sorry that last chapter was so short, but I've been kinda busy lately. Here's some action now. Also, if you want to add Undertale music to this, try "Burn in Despair!"**

* * *

All seven of us run, float, and get carried (Azalea can still hardly walk) behind the wall forming the other side of the seating for the theater area.

"Alright, what the heck are we supposed to do about this guy?!" I demand quietly.

"I don't know, I'm not the strategist here!" Astigmatism says back.

"Split up," says Erika. "If he finds some of us, the rest of us can get him from behind. Reaper Bird, you stay here with X and Azalea, everybody else follow me. Monsters, keep the humans' souls on."

Erika starts quickly moving towards the woods behind us, with Darius, Minerva, and Astigmatism following straight behind her. I crawl up the hill and look over the wall to see that the car is parked right there in the loop next to the theater.

A man wearing some sort of red ninja mask, a dark jacket, and gloves gets out of the car and walks towards the theater area. This must be Mason Richards, one of a certain several people who want everyone dead. And he's walking straight towards us. We're gonna die. No we're not. We have soul power. But he's a killer.

Just as Richards is about to come around the wall, a light blue heart appears on his chest, and he stops walking. He waves his arm around for a few seconds.

His soul is Patience? Wonder what that does.

"Get behind Azalea," I whisper to Reaper Bird, who has moths floating around their head. They don't move. Richards comes into view.

"There you...what the ****?!" he says, noticing Reaper. He takes a black pistol out of his jacket and shoots them.

Azalea and I flinch from the sound of the gun, but Reaper Bird doesn't seem to have been hurt at all.

"BDiognm'itsdtoatkheat."

Reaper unleashes Everyman, which is actually about twice as tall as Richards, and starts covering its head with moths. Richards shoots at me and Azalea, but we take cover behind her shield, and the bullets (actual gun bullets this time) ricochet right off. Then he tries to turn and run, right as Darius is speeding towards him. Holy crap; somehow, Richards manages to knock him down! AND HE'S ABOUT TO SHOOT HIM!

I shoot his gun, knocking it straight out of his hand. Darius gets up and joins me behind Azalea...wait a minute, is that Whimsalot and Knight Knight over there?

Whimsalot surrounds Richards with a ring of moths, but then he takes out _another gun_ and points it at them.

"NOBODY MOVE!" he yells. "Or these freaks die!"

Whimsalot floats down to the ground and Knight Knight puts down her Good Morningstar. Everyman vanishes along with the moths. Was that a small scream back behind me? Now we're really screwed.

Richards starts speaking again. "Now where did you all-"

Suddenly we hear sirens. Richards sprints back to his car and drives off while the rest of us run in the other direction, the only thing left behind being his first gun. We will fight murderers, but we are sure as heck not getting mixed up with the police and probably ending up on the news for our parents to see.

"What the heck _was_ he doing here?" Darius asks as we head for the Linear Park.

"I think he goes out like this every few nights to find supporters," Whimsalot answers.

"He must have decided that it would be best to kill you since you were with monsters," Knight Knight says.

"Let's go further into the woods, away from the streets," Erika suggests.

We run until we get to a small bridge, and I'm almost about to pass out from carrying Azalea...aaaaand our souls aren't even lit up anymore.

"Okay, best case scenario, Richards gets caught by the police tonight," Astigmatism says. "Worst case scernario, he escapes to somewhere that we'll never find him."

"Don't worry, if my intel is accurate, he won't be leaving this town," Whimsalot says.

"Why is that?" asks Azalea.

"There's something hidden somewhere here in Smithplain that the cult wants. Something that could be incredibly deadly."

"Like what, a nuke?" Darius says.

"Actually, that's exactly what's hidden here. Except there's a whole stash of them."

We all stood there for a second to take that in. Why the heck would there be _nuclear warheads_ here in Smithplain? I guess this is a pretty good hiding spot, considering this town is so generic and unknown to the world that it's probably never been visited on The Traveler, and that show talks about places in Texas that I'd never heard of prior to watching it. But why do we still have nukes, anyway?

"How did you two know to get here so fast?" Azalea asks.

"We've been tracking him all night," Whimsalot says. "We know what his car looks like, so we were following him around to see what he would do, and hopefully find out where he's staying so we could stage a capture or report his location to the police. If we knew he would be here earlier, we would have gotten here sooner."

"Well, thanks for coming to try and save us," Erika says. "Maybe now that we stalled him for as long as we did, the police will catch him."

"Wait a minute," I say. "We don't live very far from there. Wouldn't our parents probably have been woken up by the sound of the gunshots?"

"You're right, we gotta get home," Minerva says. "See you all later!"

We start running back up the bike trail, which doesn't seem so hard now that my arms are empty except for my baseball bat. This time, we decide to jaywalk to the other side of the street, since we're in a hurry, the street is empty and all the cops are busy, hopefully. Still, by the time we each get home, we are completely out of energy. Hopefully Azalea should be alright, since she spent a little less time running than I did. That was a pretty good workout.

Well, it doesn't look like any of the lights are on in the house, so if I'm really quiet, I should be able to get in without anyone noticing. I open the front door slowly, carefully, and quietly, and then close it just as slowly, carefully, and quietly. I head up the stairs and peek around the corner to my parents' bedroom...crap, it sounds like they're up and listening to the radio. I quickly head in the other direction towards my room, which is also my brothers' room, and close the door. Then I take off my jacket and shirt and stuff them in my shirt drawer. I take off my socks and shoes and just leave them on the floor. Nobody has to know, nor will they know that I was out late at night and almost got killed or threatened to death by a mass murderer. I fall asleep about five times as quickly as usual.

What exactly does the light blue soul do, anyway?

* * *

 **Okay, so this chapter is also pretty short. I promise the next one will be longer though.**

 **Next chapter, the gang and the Shadow Guard have to find better ways to defend themselves against things like guns.**


	10. Preparation for Preparation

**After that intense action scene, it's time to tone things down a bit.**

* * *

"Xavier, it's time to get up now."

"Alright, Mom, just a second."

...What time is it now? 6:15? Holy crap, I'm gonna have to skip breakfast. The bus comes at 6:30.

I get up and put my shirt, jacket, socks and shoes back on and brush my teeth. I'm not moving that fast because I'm still pretty tired from last night, even though the amount of sleep I got should add up to about nine hours. Now I head downstairs to pack my lunch and electronics and head out to the bus stop. The Sun's starting to come up at this point in the day these days, since Daylight Savings Time hasn't started yet. When I get to the bus stop, Erika is already there.

"Hey X, how's it going?" she says.

"Not bad, except that I had to skip breakfast this morning because I slept in too late," I reply. "How about you?"

"I'm alright. I hope nobody else missed the bus today."

Right then the bus drives up to our stop. We get on, and sit in our seats next to Azalea, who looks like she's trying to sleep. We let her do so. Then Darius and Minerva get on at the next stop, and they look just as tired. Looks like this is going to be a quiet morning.

When the bus driver let's us off at the school at 6:55, we get off and go into the cafeteria. Erika goes to the breakfast line, while the rest of us sit at our morning table. I wait until she gets back to start the conversation.

"Everyone get home alright last night?"

Azalea speaks first. "I did, but my mom was awake and seemed to be really worried about me before I got home. She gave me a huge hug when I came into the house."

"I forgot to bring my key," Minerva says. "Had to go in through a window. But no one was awake."

"My little sister woke up and wanted to know where I was," Erika says. "I told her I was on a secret crime-fighting mission. Hopefully nobody will believe either of us."

"My dad woke up when I went into my house," Darius says. "I managed to convince him I was up doing homework. He wasn't very happy with me though."

I fill them in on my situation. "When I got home, my parents were awake in their room, listening to the news on their alarm clock radio. I managed to sneak in without them noticing."

"Well, at this point, it looks like it's probably best that we don't go out at night like that anymore," Azalea says. "That was the second time someone tried to kill us."

"Yeah, you're right, Zay," Minerva says (she calls Azalea that sometimes). "But then when will we use our powers?"

"We're going to have to figure out how to control them better," I say. "If it's possible to summon our souls on command, we should be able to use our abilities more often as well. Try to find an outlet for your essences in any situation."

"That's a good idea for the most part," Azalea says, "but what if I were to get into a fight? It sounds it would be hard to have Kindness when someone's trying to hurt me."

"That...does sound difficult," I tell her. "Maybe there's a way to, like, carry reserve magic with us or something...holy crud, that's exactly it. Monsters have to have magical technology, right?"

"I guess, I mean, Alphys probably would," Darius says.

"So maybe if we're around a device that runs on magic, it would activate our souls!" I say.

"But where would we get something like that?" Erika asks. "Nobody is supposed to know that magic even exists."

"From Ebott City, obviously," I answer. "The Shadow Guard could probably order something for us from there. I'll call them about that later. Until then, find times to activate your souls on your own."

"Alright, we'll do that," Darius says, putting in his earphones. "I'm gonna watch some Vines now."

"Hey that's a good idea," I say, doing the same thing.

Things go pretty normally for most of the day. I work on a concert piece in band, annotate a speech and poem in English, and do thermochemistry in, well, chemistry. Seems like people have sort of forgotten about what happened yesterday. At the beginning of Spanish class, though, Trent comes and talks to me.

"Hey dude, I gotta talk to you for a second," he says, meeting me at my desk.

I sigh. "What do you want, Trent?"

"I just wanted to say you were right about your girl. She really doesn't deserve to end up like my ex. You keep her happy, man."

"Oh...uh...thanks," I respond, having expected nothing like this from him.

"And dude, you gotta show me how to punch like that sometime! Everybody thought you had superpowers or something!" he says, heading back to his desk.

"Uh...maybe sometime," I tell him. Wow, I am an idiot. Why didn't I tell people that I just shoved him or something?

But the real question is, what happened to Trent? He's never seemed like the kind of guy who would apologize to someone who nearly knocked him unconscious, especially when the whole school started talking about it. Could it be possible that...my pure Justice rubbed off on him? Well, class is starting, better think about that later.

Spanish is pretty easy today, so I have time at the end of class to go and talk to Azalea.

"You doing alright over here?" I ask her.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says. "What did Trent say to you earlier?"

"Oh, he basically said he's letting go what happened yesterday. He thinks I punched him or something."

"That's what it felt like to him?"

"I guess. It definitely sounds a lot more believable than 'I have no idea why the guy standing right in front of me suddenly got knocked against the wall.'"

"Yeah, you're right. But why is he giving up on me now? He's been after me for a while."

"I think the Justice may have got to him somehow. It looks like we're making breakthroughs on the power of human souls left and right lately."

"Hey, we are. Maybe we could do something with that knowledge in the future."

"That would be pretty awesome. But humans and monsters have been living together for years now, so those people probably already know this stuff."

"...Yeah, you're right. But most of the world still doesn't understand souls and magic like we do."

"Yeah, this stuff is still pretty awesome."

Then the bell rings, so we go to World History, where we watch a video on revolutions, and then to Algebra, where we take a quiz on exponential functions, and then Azalea, Erika and I go to lunch.

"Guys, I think I did it," Erika says when we meet at our table. "I got a 100 on my algebra test that I took last week, which I studied a lot for, and that filled me with Integrity!"

"Awesome!" I remark. "Did that do anything cool?"

"Well, somehow I knew that I should partner with a certain person to help them with their work, and felt like things would go great if I did, but that was pretty much it. That turned out to be true, though-you do understand something a lot better if you have to explain it to someone else."

"Nice! The more you do that, the easier it should be, right?"

"I guess...but it would probably still help to have more control over our powers."

"Oh yeah, X, did you ask the Shadow Guard about magic devices yet?" Azalea asks me.

"No, I'm planning to do that right after school," I say. "Yesterday they were also eating lunch when I called."

"Alright, then. I can't wait until we can use our powers again!"

I do follow through with that promise; as soon as I get out of my ninth-period band class, I dial up the monsters on my phone and wait for them to pick up.

"...Hello?"

"Hey, this is X, to whom am I speaking?"

"Whimsalot."

"Hey, I've got an idea that could help us fight better. Do they make, like, wristwatches with built in magic reactors or something?"

"Like, a magic watch? Why?"

"Well, magic activates our human souls, right? So it would probably help us out a lot if we had watches that could give off just enough magic to get our souls going. Like, just enough magic to make a tiny light or something. That should work as long as we're wearing the watch."

"Well, actually, I think they do sell something like that back in Ebott City. They're pretty cheap, but they run on these magical batteries that only last about twelve hours, and those are about a dollar each. I'll get some for you guys if you'll pay for the extra batteries."

"That sounds great. How soon can you get them to us?

"Definitely by the end of the week, but it should take a few days, because they'll be traveling hundreds of miles."

"Alright, thanks so much, Again, let us know what we can do to help you guys out. See you later!"

"Bye."

Right then I get out to the bus loop where the others are waiting for me.

"Hey, were you talking to Whimsalot?" Erika asks excitedly. "What did he say?"

"Yeah, he said he would have watches that run magic for us by the end of the week, but we'd have to pay for extra batteries ourselves when the first set dies."

"Heck yes!" Minerva yells. "We're going do so much cool stuff!"

"Yeah, but don't forget that we magic won't do everything for us," Azalea reminds her. "We may need to use our own essences if things get really bad."

"Darn right, we gotta keep working on that," I say as we get on the bus. "The more we use our soul power, the easier it shoule be, because we'll understand the feeling and mindset a little better."

"Okay, so our powers are cool and stuff," Darius says, "but how are we going to beat up armed murderers if some of us can only float and jump around? No offense, either of you two," he says as he gestures to Minerva and Erika.

"He's right, we need to arm ourselves," Erika says. "Practice soul abilities, but don't forget to find some things you can carry around and use as weapons when necessary."

We then chill for the rest of the ride home, but then I get off at Azalea's stop so I can talk to her.

"Hey Azalea, would you want to go shopping this evening or something? "

"Well, I suppose...yeah, sure, but what would we shop for?"

"I was thinking candy or something, but then if we find anything good we could use as a weapon or armor or something, we could get that too. That, and we'd get some time alone together."

"I'd love to go shopping with you tonight. Let's go at 5:00, on our bikes."

"Okay, but remember, we should probably finish our homework before then. See you then!"

"See you, X!"

I head home, ready to get my decent amount of homework for tonight done as fast as possible. Can't keep her waiting.

* * *

 **Another productive school day, huh?**

 **Next chapter, Azalea and X go out on a hot shopping date...for fighting gear!**


	11. Date Gone Dangerous

**Yay, more X x Azalea time. Just happy fun times, shopping for weapons.**

* * *

Well, Mom's somewhat on board with me going out with Azalea tonight (though she sounds like she's worried about the amount of money I'm spending), so I gotta get all my world history homework done in about an hour. I should be able to do that any day, but I always end up reading Undertale fanfictions for hours. Not this time, though, because fanfictions have got nothing on Azalea.

...And done! Okay, five minutes to five, I should just barely be able to meet her by her street, that was close. I grab my phone, wallet, bike lock, and keys, let my brother know to close the garage door behind me, and I'm off on my bike. Oh crud, she's already there waiting.

"Hey, Azalea," I say riding up to her. "Sorry I took so long, I had to finish my homework-"

"It's fine," she says. "I sort of just got here, I had some difficult homework too.

"Oh, well, we're both here then, I guess. Let's get going," I say with a smile.

The nearest supermarket is only slightly closer than Zeze's, so when we take that shortcut through the church parking lot and cross the road from there, we're already there...as soon as we get through this huge parking lot. Once we do, we lock our bikes to a lamppost and head inside holding hands.

"So what sort of weapon were you thinking of getting, X?" Azalea asks me.

"Oh, yeah...I forgot to think about that," I reply. "I kinda do want some duct tape, though. There's no problem that can't be solved with duct tape."

"Heh, that's a good idea. Hope we can find it..."

We start walking in the direction of the tools and hardware section of the store, though we're not sure where to find the duct tape, so we start wandering around.

"Did you happen to come up with any ideas, Azalea?"

"Uh...maybe I could put a knife on the end of something long, like a PVC pipe? That could be like a spear, I guess."

"That sounds cool. I think I might stick with a baseball bat, it should work well enough. Might wanna get my own, though. Not sure what would happen to me if I broke my brother's."

"True."

We look down a few more aisles and find the duct tape we're looking for, as well as varying lengths of PVC pipe. We grab two rolls of tape and two five-foot pipes.

"Do we need anything else?" Azalea asks.

"Uh, do we need to buy you some knives?" I ask back.

"I don't think so, I think I can just use some from home..."

"Crud, then we're pretty much done shopping for weapons then, huh? Wait, should we work on armor or something?"

"I'm not sure about any good armor..."

"...Yeah, you're right. Even if we made something somewhat protective, it'd probably end up looking stupid. Let's go get candy!"

Azalea and I start walking all the way to the other end of the store.

"Should we have gotten a cart or something?" Azalea asks.

"Eh, we're not getting that much stuff, we should be fine," I answer. "I can carry two rolls of duct tape and a few bags of candy."

"Well, that's exercise then, right?"

"Yep, we're getting buff."

"Ha ha, yeah, we're gonna be football players now."

We laugh at that again for a second, but then Azalea turns and glances behind us for a second.

"Doing all right, Azalea?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

She doesn't exactly look like she's good to go. I'll give her some time. Plus, now we're here at the candy aisle.

Candy at a supermarket doesn't cost as much as I used to think it did. Apparently you can get a big bag of M&Ms for about four dollars, and a box of candy that would cost a dollar at a concession stand for about 75 cents. Of course, supermarkets charge sales tax, so we still need to be careful that we don't get too much.

"Are you thinking of getting anything in particular, X?" Azalea asks.

"Well, I'm probably going to get a box of Nerds," I answer. "If I eat them one at a time, they'll last a few days. How about you?"

"Hmm...there's way too many choices, I think I'll need a minute to decide."

"That'll do."

Azalea and I stand around and check out all the different candies we could pick out. Seriously, picking one or two things is hard. But then Azalea quickly looks to both sides and then grabs a bag of Swedish Fish and a box of Mike & Ikes.

"...Is something wrong?" I ask.

"X...I think someone's following us again." she says quietly.

"Not a monster this time?"

"No. Look to the left."

I do so, and I see a bald guy wearing gloves in the aisle across from us. Hey, was this guy was in the tools area when we were? I think he was.

"Oh, crap, that sounds like a fair guess," I whisper. "Let's go somewhere else and see what happens."

I take my Nerds and a bag of fun size Butterfingers and we both head in the opposite direction of that guy, until we end up in the clothes section.

"Well, we might as well see if they have any cool shirts," Azalea says. "But keep looking for that man."

"Alright," I reply. "Dang, I wish they made Undertale shirts, I would totally buy one of those."

We start looking at shirts, even though we don't actually plan on buying any. After a minute or two, I notice the guy standing about thirty feet away from us.

"The toy section," I tell Azalea. "If he follows us there, he's definitely doing it on purpose."

We quickly walk across the store to the toy section and look at Nerf guns, which are more expensive than they used to be, so I'm not going to be buying any anytime soon. After another few minutes, the dude wearing gloves walks right past us.

"Okay, time to get the heck outta Dodge," I say, and we both run towards the checkout counters. We throw our stuff down on the one without a line.

"Okay, let me make sure that that I've got enough to pay for this stuff," I say. "Crap, I'm less than a dollar short. I'm going to have to put the Nerds back."

I look up at Azalea and her...soul is glowing!

"It's okay, I'll pay for them," she says, her voice sounding possibly even more soothing than usual. "You have been helping me out a lot lately."

"That...does sound fair," I tell her. "Thanks so much."

I feel myself being filled with Justice from Azalea paying me back for helping her with her immobility. I toss my Nerds into her side of the conveyor belt and give her a huge hug.

Suddenly I feel like I want to be nicer to people. This feeling is sort of like Justice, but warmer and less intense. Is Azalea's Kindness traveling into me?

"That'll be $14.73," the lady behind the checkout counter says. Dang it, we picked the wrong time to have one of our little love moments.

I hand her my fifteen dollars, take my change, put it in my pocket, and grab my bag of stuff. Azalea starts getting ready to pay for her load (it's not easy to keep the PVC pipes on the conveyor belt) while are souls finish deactivating, which is probably for the best, considering this place is full of people. Wait...crap. That stalker of ours is back there, and he's staring at us and _smiling._ When Azalea finishes paying, she tosses me my Nerds, while I hand her a roll of duct tape, and then I grab her arm and get us running.

"That guy's coming for us," I say. "We gotta go now."

We run for the exit and to our bikes, and I start unlocking our bikes as quickly as I can.

"X, hurry!" Azalea says. "I think I see him coming!"

"See if you can get your soul on again," I say. "Remember how it felt a minute ago and try to bring that back."

I sling my bag and the lock cable over my shoulder and start locking the actual lock back to the bike when I hear a voice.

"Hey, you two."

" _Kindness, Azalea,_ " I whisper, as I turn around and end up face to face with the bald man with gloves.

"Uh...do you need something?" I ask.

"I want to congratulate you two," he says in an important sounding voice. "I witnessed the demonstration that you performed in the checkout line. You see, the secret society I belong to has been looking for individuals who are gifted in magic, such as you. If you will come with me here and now, you could be inducted into our society and...receive a large cash reward."

This guy obviously has no idea what he's talking about. If I tell him that though, he's probably going to attack us or something, so let's be more careful.

I take Azalea's hand, that should help her. "Uh, thanks, it's an honor, but...it's no big deal, really. Have you ever heard of Undertale?"

"Well, no, why?"

"It's the best video game of all time in my opinion for several reasons: awesome story, great humor, engaging gameplay, and it's historically accurate. If you want to really understand magic, all you have to do is play it. Well, actually, nobody really understands magic, but you get what I'm saying."

"I'm afraid there's no time for discussion now, sir. Now will you come with me, or miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to live more fulfilling lives of magic and wonder?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but we're already in a secret society of our own, and the last few days have been some of the best in our lives because of it. We will unfortunately have to decline your generous offer."

At this point, I start to try and find some Justice to save me. If anyone deserves to survive this situation, it's me and Azalea. This guy stalked us and is obviously trying to kidnap us.

"Wrong answer," the man says, pulling out a metal shovel from behind his back. "You're coming with me."

Right then, Azalea steps between me and this criminal, with her shield going.

"No, we're not," I retort.

"Yes, you are!"

The man swings his shovel at us, hitting the Azalea's blue shield square on. I feel the impact slightly, as I'm holding onto Azalea...wait a minute, I thought the stuff she blocked didn't affect her physically. He swings again, this time planting the shovel right on the shield and trying to push it forwards. This shouldn't be a problem, but...it looks like the shovel is slowly starting to pass through the shield! This guy can't hurt Azalea, she never did anything bad!

I step out from behind Azalea and, my soul burning bright, throw a bullet straight at the man's head. He jerks his head back and quits trying to shove through Azalea's shield, but then looks angry and aims a blow at me. I quickly shoot him three times in the chest, causing him to fall to the ground. He doesn't get up, but instead holds his shovel up in front of himself in defense. I make my fingers into gun shapes and point them at him.

"Alright buddy, now that we're done lying to each other, we can talk about why we're here right now. My amazing girlfriend and I were here buying supplies to arm ourselves for situations like these. May I ask why you were stalking us and trying to kidnap us?"

"Someone made me do it! I was out really early this morning, and someone pointed a gun at me and said that he would kill me if I didn't find people with glowing hearts on their chests and bring them to him. He said that one had a black and red jacket, another had red hair and a skirt, and a third was black and wore a black leather jacket. Don't zap me with your magic again, please!"

"What did the person who threatened you look like?"

"He had a red ninja mask and a dark jacket. Oh, and he wore black leather gloves."

"You're wearing gloves too."

"I just didn't want my fingerprints to show up on the weapon!"

I lower my hand-guns a little. "Dude, chill. I know some people who can help track this guy down. Where did you see him?"

"In front of my house. I live over by the northern city limits, next to that Mormon church. He just drove straight up to me and pointed his gun at me from his car. He seemed like he was in a rush."

My soul fades away, and I grab the guy's hand to help him up. "Alright, thanks, and sorry to freak you out here. Like I said, if you want to know more about this stuff, just play Undertale. It's for the PC, should only cost about ten dollars."

"I will, as soon as I call the police about that guy. No hard feelings about this little incident?"

"Nah, I think we're good here. Just don't tell anyone that crazy magic teenagers are running loose or anything like that, alright? People might get the wrong idea. Actually, if you end up liking Undertale, which you will, tell your friends to play it."

"Okay, I'll do that. I should get going now."

"Yeah, us too. Bye."

The man heads into the parking lot, while Azalea and I pick up our stuff and start riding back home.

"Nice job work activating your soul, Azalea," I say as we ride through the parking lot.

"Thanks," she says. "It was hard at first, but then you held my hand and I thought of all the things I would do for you to help with...well, pretty much anything. You were great too, with your soul and stuff."

"Thanks, but it doesn't seem to be that hard to activate it when someone with nothing against you is trying to beat you to unconsciousness. How did you manage to get in front of me so fast once you got your soul going, though?"

"Didn't you say our powers are stronger when we use them without magic?"

"Oh yeah, you're right. We're going to have to be more careful against people who use melee weapons, though. Probably one of the best things about your Kindness shield is that it can deflect bullets, but when a weapon is held close to a person's body, it apparently can gain the ability to travel through with the person."

"Wow, you're so smart with this stuff, X."

"Well, when you really like something, you think about it a lot."

We don't really end up saying much for the rest of the ride home, pretty much just enjoying each other's company. When we get to Azalea's street, we hug each other goodbye, and then part ways for the evening. That was a great date...but I should probably tell the Shadow Guard about the guy who attacked us.

* * *

 **Next chapter, X calls up the Shadow Guard, who may have news of their own...**


	12. Gangs and Felons (With a Side of Vines)

**Once again, nothing to say here, so here we go...**

* * *

Dang, I've been tired lately. Well, I guess it's worth the awesome stuff that's been happening the past few days.

After dinner, I take my phone up to my room, close the door (hopefully nobody will show up here for the next few minutes), and call the Shadow Guard.

"Hello?" I recognize Whimsalot's voice.

"Hey Whimsalot, this is X again," I say.

"X? I was just about to call you. What do you need?"

"Azalea and I went out shopping today, and somebody tried to kidnap us. I think Mason Richards is targeting us."

"He probably is, isn't he? You and your friends might have to be more careful around town, then. What did the person who tried to kidnap you look like?"

"Well, he was bald, and he tried to knock us out with a shovel, but he was pretty normal otherwise. He said Richards threatened him at gunpoint to find me, Azalea and Darius specifically. He lives near the northern city limits, I think in this one neighborhood directly west of the freeway and east of my LDS church. Richards caught him right outside his house early this morning. I don't think we need to worry about him anymore, though, he said he'd call the police about him."

"Richards does that. Most people wouldn't want to help him kill people or steal the government's hidden weapons otherwise. Speaking of that, we have something for you to do now."

"Oh, already? What you got?"

"About two weeks ago, Richards caught a group of teenagers going out at night, and now they seem to be some of his most loyal followers, though I can't say whether or not they want to be. We found out that they often meet in the woods behind your very neighborhood. If you five could go out there and spy on them to see if they reveal any information about Richards, it would definitely help."

"Wait wait, a gang that hangs out behind our neighborhood? What do they look like?"

"Well, one of them is really tall, and has a bright red Mohawk, and another wears these offensive shirts..."

"I think I know these guys. We can take care of that. How've you guys been doing in terms of tracking down Richards, by the way?"

"Not that great. We've been all over town, and we can't find where he lives. That tip on that neighborhood north of town sounds helpful, though. But some people in that area saw Knight Knight without her cloak hood up once, so it's probably a bit risky to go up there."

"One of us could probably help."

"Actually, that'd be a good idea. Let us know when you're ready for that, and if you find out anything from that gang."

"Alright, I shall. See you." I hang up there.

Whimsalot was obviously talking about Bob's gang. My gang and I ran into Bob and his gang of three others last summer a few times in the northeast corner of the neighborhood, which opens into some woods. His gang was always smoking and/or drinking, and they drank from glass bottles, which could potentially become what I have heard called bar knives. The day we decided to explore those woods, Bob smashed his bottle against a tree and chased us out, which was the first time we met him. Thankfully I've never seen him at school before, or I would probably hate whatever class I had with him.

So now our mission is to infiltrate his turf and spy on them? Challenge accepted.

* * *

The next morning, once we're all on the bus, I give the others the low-down on our first real assignment.

"Richards got Bob's gang?" Darius says. "With all the crap they get into, I guess I'm not that surprised, but I didn't know they wanted to kill people."

"They probably don't, Richards usually threatens people into doing what he wants," I say.

"So we're going to spy on them to see if they say anything?" Minerva says. "That sounds cool. When are we going?"

"We should probably go as soon as possible. That being said, they would also like one of us to accompany them on a recon mission in the neighborhood next to my church, if anyone's up for that instead."

"I'll do that!" Erika calls out. "I mean, I could probably learn more about monsters or something while I'm there, you know, because we're all into that...right?"

"Well, yeah, I suppose so," I respond. Weird; she seemed pretty excited, but then it sounds like she just tried to cover it up or something.

"Well, I gotta work today and tomorrow, so do you guys wanna go on Friday?" Darius asks.

"That'll work for me," I reply. "I've actually got a fair amount of homework due tomorrow and Friday."

Everyone else expresses their approval of waiting until Friday.

* * *

The school day goes pretty darn smoothly, by which I mean nothing crazy or interesting happens. So now we're getting on the bus again, ready to head home.

"Anybody wanna play me at Drive Ahead?" I ask my friends.

"Me!" Minerva calls out. "Ready to get rekt?"

"Nope, that's your job," I retort as we start up a game. "Or should I say, it's your job to get dunked on."

I beat Minerva at the first game, and then she wins the second one (though I feel like it was only because she got all the better cars), at which point Azalea speaks up.

"Uh, guys? Look over there..."

I look out the window where she's pointing, which is at the gas station a few hundred feet away. Getting ready to move out from there is a red car with a black stripe.

"Crap, everybody get down!" Erika shouts. We all duck down and away from the windows.

"What the **** are you idiots doing?" the guy sitting in front of me asks.

"That's classified!" I hastily shout.

"Uh, we messed with a gang, and they're in one of the other buses," Darius tells him. "Don't rat us out, alright?"

"Y'all guys are full of bull****," the guy says as he starts to ignore us.

That went well.

Minerva sits up to peek out the window, and then quickly gets down again. "He just drove past us."

I look out my window and see Mason Richards's car following close behind a different bus. "What's he doing?" I ask.

"It doesn't look like he saw us, that's for sure," Erika says. "But he's probably looking for us. He's right behind a bus."

"Crap, he's gonna find us eventually and then we'll really be screwed," I say.

"Unless we find him before he finds us," Darius says. "That shouldn't be that hard, considering we're going after Bob's gang later this week."

"I guess you're right," I say. "Oh, that reminds me, anybody make any cool weapons yet?"

"Well, I could use a golf club," Erika says. "They're pretty long. How about you guys?"

"I'm gonna get some brass knuckles, I heard those are pretty dangerous," Darius says.

"Hey, didn't the orange soul who fell into the Underground use fist weapons?" I ask.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot that," Darius replies. "In that case, shouldn't you be using a gun then, X?"

"Nah, I don't even know where to get a gun. I'm sticking with a baseball bat. Minerva?"

"Bow and arrow. I'm actually not bad at aiming with those. What about you, Azalea?"

"Well, I'm making sort of a spear out of knives and PVC pipe. Sounds a little bit unnecessary now, though."

"No, it's still pretty awesome," I tell her. "It's lightweight, sharp, and pretty creative."

"Aw, thanks," Azalea says, smiling at me.

* * *

We don't really have much to say for the rest of the ride home, so we play on our iPads until we get to our stops, and then head home from there. When I get home, I get started on my chores, but then I head up to my room, open my messaging app and start a conversation with my friends.

Me: Check out this hilarious Vine _*attached is a Vine of a bunch of shirtless guys parading through a fast food place with a "no shoes/no shirt, no service" rule*_

Darius: ROFL who made that?

Me: Carson Nett

Me: he also made this one * _attached is a Vine that tricks the viewer into thinking racistly about people's names*_

Minerva: LOL seriously I cannot stop laughing at that one

Me: Yeah, kinda wish he wouldn't curse so much though

Erika: Me too

Azalea: It's still really funny though

Me: Okay one more * _attached is a Vine making fun of the lyrics to EDM songs*_

Darius: Wow somehow anything that says "watermeloan" is automatically funny

Erika: I have to do my homework and study now

Me: Oh yeah me too, see you guys

Azalea: Good night, X

Me: Good Knight Azalea _*kissy face emoji*_

Hanging out tends to be more fun when you've got internet.

* * *

 **Could you tell which Viner I was referring to? In case it wasn't clear, he is often racist and likes to make Vines about watermeloan. He's also one of my favorites.**

 **2017 update: I know Vine is gone now, but I still love to go back and watch vine compilations on YouTube. Hopefully they don't shorten my attention span too much.**

 **Next chapter, the gang heads out to get information from a real gang. Let's hope they're ready!**


	13. Gang Vs Actual Gang

**Let's get this ball rolling, shall we?**

* * *

"Is he there, Minerva?" I ask.

"He's in front of Pizza Pavilion."

We hide in the small spaces in front of our seats on the bus and wait. Yesterday (Thursday), Mason Richards's car was nowhere in sight, but today, he's pretty much right across the street from us. Apparently he hasn't given up on us yet.

"Okay, he went after another bus, we're safe."

We sit back up in our seats.

"This guy is going to find us eventually. We gotta do something," Darius says.

"Maybe we could have the Shadow Guard follow him while he follows the buses?" Erika asks.

"Oh yeah, that's a great idea. Let's do that," I reply.

"Wait...what if he notices that he's being followed?" Azalea asks.

"Oh, crud, that would be a big risk," I agree. "I'll ask them about it. But tonight, we mess with Bob's gang, right?"

"Yep," Darius says. "I've actually been wanting to do something like that for a while, those guys are never not back there, it seems."

"Well, tonight, that's a good thing though, right?" I say. "Cause we need them to be there to tell us stuff."

"Yeah, yeah, we all get what's going on, X," Minerva says. "We go at 5:00 and spy for info on Richards."

"Except I'm going to be across town looking for clues about where he went earlier this week," Erika says.

"And we wish you luck with that," Azalea says.

"Thanks."

* * *

While I'm doing my chores that afternoon, I get a call from the Shadow Guard, which I answer as soon as I take my phone up to my room.

"Hello?"

"X, this is Whimsalot. Have you, by any chance, completed your mission yet?"

"Well, no, but we're about to in about an hour and a half. Why?"

"That's perfect. I just wanted to let you know that the watches you asked for came in today. Knight Knight drove over and hid them near the forest behind your neighborhood."

"Really? Awesome! They got batteries, right?"

"Yes, but make sure to conserve them."

"Alright, thanks so much, dude."

"And one more thing: when you and your friends go out and spy on that gang, please, try not to get hurt. Some of us would hardly be able to handle it if we caused innocent people to get hurt."

"We shall be careful. Talk to you later."

"You too."

As I hang up, my brother walks into the room. "Who were you talking to?" he asks.

"Erika," I respond quickly.

"What were you so excited about?"

"Uh, well, she said she finished this one part of a project we've been working on for World History, and it looks really cool."

"What's the project on?"

"Uh...samurai. We're using these cool animation effects."

"Oh, nice. Can I see it when you're done?"

Crap, I am an idiot, I forgot that if you're going to lie about something, you can't make it sound interesting! "Uh, I don't think so, you need a certain program to run it that we don't have."

"Oh, okay."

That was kinda close. But now I just remembered that I need to remind my friends some things about the mission tonight. I send a message to them on my phone:

Me: Richards knows what some of us look like. Wear something you wouldn't normally wear. And don't forget your weapons just in case.

Darius: got it

Alright, time to finish my chores and then chill for an hour.

* * *

At 4:45, I change shirts, take one of my dad's old baseball bats from the garage, tell my mom that I'm off to play baseball with the gang, and head out the door, making sure not to wear my jacket. I want those freaking watches, but I'm not going to touch them until my friends get here. When I get to the entrance to the woods, I stand around and hope that they show up before Bob's gang comes out or something. Luckily, they do; first Darius in a hoodie and baseball cap, then Minerva in a white shirt and gray sweatpants, and finally Azalea in a blue shirt and blue jeans. All of them are carrying/wearing their respective weapons.

"Dang, I did not try hard enough with the dressing up thing, did I?" I remark once everyone else is here.

"I think no jacket is good enough for you, X," Azalea assures me.

"Okay, I gotta tell you guys something right now," I say. "The magic watches I had the Shadow Guard order for us came today, and now they're hidden somewhere around here!"

"There's a cardboard box over there, is that them?" Minerva asks, pointing next to a tree.

How did I not see that box before?! I run straight over to it, and notice that it's already open and...it's empty.

"Ohhhhh, crap," Darius says. "Somebody stole them."

"Probably Bob," Minerva says. "We need to get those back."

"Darn right," I say. "Quiet though, we still need to see if they say anything about Richards."

We walk slowly into the woods, which start sloping downhill, and then bring us to sort of a mini-creek. We take turns jumping over a rather skinny part of the creek, and then proceed down a dirt path.

"We're sort of like one of those teams from RWBY, don't you guys think?" Azalea asks us.

"Hey, yeah, we are," I answer. "Four of us with our own unique weapons, and our soul powers are almost like Semblances."

My favorite crossover fanfictions have always been RWBY and Undertale. Apparently RWBY does, in fact, count as an anime, at least on the fanfiction website. Wonder if Alphys has seen it?

We come across sort of a clearing, at which point Darius motions for us to quickly hide behind some trees. I look over and see that Bob and his gang are right there in the clearing.

Bob himself is really tall with this huge, bright red Mohawk, which make him look even taller. The guy standing next to him has shades and a shirt that I wish I had not read. Behind them are a shirtless dude with lots of tattoos and a guy with really long hair. And they are wearing our watches, two of them on Bob's wrists.

Let the spying commence.

"What are we doing here again, Bob?" the guy with the tattoos asks before taking a drink.

"Fighting," Bob replies. "We gotta get used to it if we're gonna work for this guy."

"But we don't have guns yet," the guy with long hair says.

"We gotta fight without guns to get guns."

"Oh, I already got guns," the tattooed guy says flexing.

"*****, you got BB guns, I'm getting me an AK47," says the one with shades.

"Dude, everyone knows *****es love a man who's good with a Glock," says the long-haired dude.

"Okay, we'll fight with those and see who ends up dead."

"Shut up, we're getting started now," Bob says, turning towards the shades guy and the long-haired one. "Thomas and Jimmy, it's you against me and Reese."

Perfect, we can wait until these guys have already beaten each other up, and then ask for our watches back, and they'll hardly be able to fight us.

Wait...Thomas is messing with his watch. Time for plan B: confront them now.

"Hey!" Darius calls out as he takes a few steps forward.

"What the **** are you doing on our turf?!" Bob yells at Darius.

"Calm down dude, I just wanna talk about something real quick, and then I'll leave," Darius responds."

"Start talking."

"Have you guys seen our watches? We left them right outside these woods."

"Oh, these things?" Bob holds up two fists. "Yeah, they're ours now. You put them too close to our turf."

"Look, dude, what do you want for those watches? I got a hundred bucks at home if you want it." Is Darius seriously offering to buy our watches back from these guys?

"Make it a hundred each and you got a deal."

I step out from behind the trees, holding my bat behind my back. "Listen, as much as we wish we could give you that much money, we need those watches. We...owe them to a friend of ours."

"Why the **** should I care? Just get the **** off our turf before we make you!"

"We will leave as soon as we get our watches."

"We're not giving you your ****ing watches!" Bob smashes a glass bottle against a tree. His guys step forward and smash their bottles.

I hold out my baseball bat. "Well, looks like we gotta take them then."

"I ****ing dare you to come any closer."

Azalea and Minerva come out of hiding. Azalea points her spear (which has two knives on it) towards the gang, Darius holds up his fists, and Minerva starts nocking an arrow. Then, a tense moment of stare down.

" _Okay, so we're about to fight,_ " I whisper to my friends. " _We can't reason with these guys, so try to dodge their attacks and fight only until you can spare them."_

At this point I realize what we're getting into. These guys are clearly more dangerous than we are, yet we're trying to show them otherwise. And Whimsalot said not to get hurt. Not to mention that I've never been in a fight like this before.

I can't think about that now, though. We need those watches back. Gotta just give it what I got.

Bob takes a step forward. I almost flinch, but my determination allows me to hold my ground.

Then Bob yells and really runs straight towards me. Now we're fighting.

I swing my bat at his bottle and straight back. The first swing misses but the next hits his other arm. Bob thrusts his bar knife at me, and I drop to the ground and roll to avoid it, but the back of my shoulder gets cut during the roll. As I'm in pain, I notice the litter-filled creek behind Bob. I kick him in the leg, stand up, and start wildly swinging my bat around it front of him. Bob starts backing up and reaching for his pocket, but slips and falls into the creek. That should buy me some time.

I turn around to help out my friends. Thomas seems to be having trouble getting anywhere close to Azalea, who keeps thrusting her spear forward but not touching him with it. Jimmy is in a bit of a standoff with Minerva, who has an arrow aimed straight at him. And-okay, Darius is the one I need to help first. Reese has him pinned against a tree.

"AND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA!" I yell as I run straight up to Reese and smash him in the head with my bat. Reese falls down and doesn't move.

"Oh...he needs some milk!" Darius exclaims.

"Yeah, you go save your girlfriend while I save mine," I say quickly as I head over to Azalea.

Is...Thomas trying to tie her up with a rope? That is just...wrong!

I start to feel my soul light up a little (why is it always abusive action towards Azalea that sets off my soul?), but it's probably not a good idea to blow our cover to these guys, so I let it die down as I nail Thomas in the chest. Azalea runs over and holds her spear a few inches from his throat.

"Thanks for the help," Azalea says as Thomas struggles to breathe.

"You're welcome," I reply, turning towards Darius to see that he and Minerva have Jimmy down, and still with an arrow pointed at him. We're pretty lucky that she didn't have to shoot anyone with those.

Suddenly, I feel someone grab me from behind and hold something in front of my throat. All of my friends look at me with wide eyes.

Bob wins.

"I...am going to ****ing kill each and every one of you ****ers," Bob growls at us.

I aim my eyes down as far as they will go, and see that Bob is indeed holding a knife at my throat...but the sharp side of the blade is facing away from me!

I elbow him in the gut as hard as I can, and Darius runs up and punches him straight in the face with his brass knuckles, knocking him flat on his face.

Once Bob gets his face off the ground, there's a bloodstain in the dirt and on his face.

"You guys are ****ing crazy," he says. "...Well, what do you want?!"

"The watches," I tell him. He takes off both of the magic watches he's wearing and throws them at me with what little energy he has left. Darius goes over to the other gang members and takes their watches, one of them straight off Reese's wrist, since he's still out cold.

"One more thing," I say. "What do you know about a man in a red ninja mask?"

"Whatever happens after I tell you about him would be worse than anything you little ****s could do to me."

"Well...okay, I guess that'll have to do for now," I reply. "Sorry we had to beat you guys up, I guess..."

"We gave you your watches, just ****ing leave."

"Okay, we're gone," I say, turning around and heading back towards the neighborhood with Darius, Azalea, and Minerva following behind slowly, making sure none of the gang mambers chase after us. Lucky for us, it doesn't seem like they're interested anymore.

* * *

Once we're out of the woods, Darius and I pass watches to Azalea and Minerva, and we all put them on for the first time. The watches look like regular digital watches, but they're very black, with the time shown in blue. All the buttons I'm used to are there, plus a bright blue button near the top. That must be the button that turns the magic on and off.

Minerva turns hers on. "Whoa, I think I could get addicted to this feeling."

"Yeah, probably don't," I respond. "It only lasts twelve hours before you have to buy a new battery."

"Doesn't mean you can't be determined," Darius tells her.

"Alright," Minerva says as she turns off her watch and starts concentrating. "Come on, come on...crap, I lost it."

"That was pretty good, though; you held it for, like, five seconds," I say. "Hey Darius, I'll give that fifth one to Erika when I see her if you want."

"Oh, alright." Darius hands me Erika's watch. "Anybody got plans this weekend? I'm free."

"I got church on Sunday, as usual," I reply. "Got Saturday open though."

"Well, I'm gonna be sleeping in tomorrow morning and gaming tomorrow evening, but I should be available in between," Minerva says.

"My mom wants me home all Sunday so she can have some bonding time with me and my brother," Azalea says.

"Okay, I gotta go home and report back to the Shadow Guard," I tell everyone. "I'll see you all later."

"Anybody wanna race home?" Darius asks, smiling and turning on his watch.

"Oh, you're not leaving me behind," Minerva says, as she turns on her watch and grabs Darius's hand. Darius takes off faster than this neighborhood's speeds limit, dragging Minerva behind him through the air almost like a kite.

"Oh crud, there better not be anyone else out there to see them," I say.

"I'm sure they'll be fine," Azalea says. "See you later!"

"Bye, Azalea."

We head in different directions off to our homes. Holy crap, we just won a fight. Now I just gotta figure out how I'm gonna explain the cut on my back.

* * *

 **Wow. I am bordering on Sans's level of laziness here. A whole month without updates. Somebody just knock me dead. This next chapter will come out within the next week, I promise.**

 **Next chapter, X has an idea for a productive but also fun way to spend the weekend.**


	14. Time to Get Edgy

**Okay, I lied. I know. But it's out now.**

* * *

I head up the driveway and step straight inside my house.

"Hey Xavier!" My mom says, playing on her phone in the kitchen.

"Hey Mom." I go through the kitchen to the garage to put the baseball bat back.

"Who won the baseball game?" my mom asks when I get back to the kitchen.

"Oh, uh..." (forgot that we were supposedly playing baseball) "Darius and Minerva. Erika was busy tonight so she couldn't come."

"Oh, alright. How do you keep track of so many friends?"

"There's only four of them. Pretty easy when they're such good friends anyway."

"Well okay. Do you have any homework this weekend?"

"A little algebra, but that's pretty much it."

"Don't leave it all to the last minute."

"Fine."

I turn around to get on the computer when Mom speaks up again.

"What happened to your back?"

"Oh, I...slipped and fell on a little broken glass while we were heading to the area we were playing in."

"Which was?"

"That one culdesac in the back of the neighborhood."

"Go upstairs and put a bandage on it, please."

"Okay."

I head up to my mom and dad's room and grab a bandage out of their closet to apply to the cut on the back of my shoulder. Actually, I'm glad she reminded me to do this, 'cause open wounds like these can get infected or something if left open. Well, now it's time to report back to the Shadow Guard, though one of my brothers is up in my room right now, so I'll have to lock myself in the bathroom. I dial their number and wait for someone to pick up.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's X. Do I have Whimsalot?"

"No, this is Astigmatism. Whimsalot is still off gathering info with Final and your other friend. Did you guys finish your assignment?"

"Yep. Actually, that gang found the watches you sent us before we did, so we had to fight them to get them back, and all we heard from them was that they were going to get guns or something. Thanks for those, by the way."

"D**n it, I told him we should have written something menacing on the box! *sigh* Alright, we'll see what we can do with that. We'll let you know if we need you to do anything else for us."

"Glad to help. Talk to you later."

"Bye."

Okay, now that _that's_ taken care of, I can start messing with my watch!

First I turn off the light and turn on my watch. Dang, Justice just feels powerful, but in a more...reserved way. Under the influence of magic, my soul is about as bright as a smartphone screen, but the magic light on the watch is only as bright as the power light on the Wii U.

I take off my watch, set it on the counter, and slowly move away from it. As I do so, my soul starts to get dimmer until I'm standing a whole four feet away, at which point it's gone. That's really not much magic.

Let's see, what can I shoot in here without breaking anything or making noise? ...Toilet paper, of course.

I put my watch back on, turn off the light and tear off a square of toilet paper. I hold it by the top edge (ready), point my finger at it (aim), and shoot it (FIRE). The bullet rips straight through the toilet paper and hits the door, making a loud BANG.

Crap, I thought the bullet would stop at the first thing it hit!

"What was that?" my mom calls out.

"Sorry, I...slipped and fell," I call back.

I think that's enough playing with existential substances for today.

* * *

Hmm, haven't played with Nerf guns for a while. Maybe I'll practice reloading the revolver.

My siblings and I have always enjoyed Nerf guns, but our house isn't big enough for an actual Nerf war, so we haven't done that with each other yet. We also have some Nerf swords, along with this wooden toy sword that my brother picked up at a Renaissance fair. That one is my favorite because...wait a minute, didn't Darius said he had one of these?

I got an idea. I grab my phone and open our group chat.

Me: Darius, you free for the next hour?

Darius: sure, why?

Me: Meet me in the rain gutter in fifteen minutes and bring your wooden sword, I'm thinking of trying something edgy

Minerva: Can I come?

Me: Sure why not?

Darius: Alright I'll see if I can find my sword.

Me: See you there

I tell my mom that I'm going to the rain gutter to hang out, and then I grab my wooden sword, phone, and magical watch and head out the door.

The rain gutter in our neighborhood runs perpendicular to my street, but there's a culdesac with walkway that leads right down to the end of it that opens out into the creek in the woods. One could jump down into it from the street, but it's not easy due to the thick railing, and it's even harder to get back up that way. The shade, steep inclines, and lack of cars or anything makes this the perfect place to hang out.

I walk down the narrow alley, duck under the vegetation, and maneuver myself around the slope at the end of the gutter, at which point I walk down the gutter to the shady area close to the street. This afternoon it's really sunny, so there's a big contrast between the shady and more open areas. I set down my sword and start playing on my phone...until I hear someone drop down from above.

"What's up, X?" Darius says.

"I'm alright, how about you?" I reply.

"I'm good."

"You haven't seen Minerva, have you?"

"She should be here any second now, she wasn't all that far behind me."

"Were you two racing here or something?" I ask right before I see Minerva running up to the railing on the street.

"I thought we both agreed *gasp* that you weren't going to do that *gasp* without taking me with you!" Minerva yells at Darius as she climbs over the railing and jumps down into the rain gutter.

"Sorry babe, that's the last time," Darius apologizes.

"Dude, did you-" I start to ask.

"We were racing and he cheated," Minerva tells me.

"Duuude, someone's gonna notice if you keep doing that!" I say to Darius.

"Dude, chill, if there were anyone there I wouldn't have done it."

"Anyway, what are we doing here, X?" Minerva asks.

I hold up my toy sword. "Okay, so you guys know how larp swords fights usually work right? Touch-based, if it touches a limb you lose it? With rules like those and foam swords, people end up standing just out of reach of each other and trying to poke their opponent without touching their opponent's sword. Parrying and dodging are impossible."

"But these wooden swords tho, they're hard and they have some weight. If we fight with these, we won't need dumb rules like those because you'll know when you've lost. Which is when you drop your sword or take a strong hit."

"That would hurt though, wouldn't it?" Darius asks.

"Yeah, but that's what we want right now," I answer. "If we get into another fight like that, we need to know how to fight and be ready to experience pain. This is our practice."

"Sounds awesome," Minerva says. "Who's first?"

"I was thinking me and Darius."

"Alright, let's go then," Darius says, standing up and picking up his sword. I position myself about eight feet away from him, with my back to the the end of the gutter (which is about fifty feet away).

So we're about to have my first wooden sword duel. Hopefully neither of us end up with brain damage or broken bones. Actually, this go wrong in several ways.

"Alright dude, just try to forget what happens when you win or lose and just dodge, parry and strike," I remind Darius.

"Got it," he says. "I'm ready."

"Go."

Darius swings his sword at my chest while I jump backwards to dodge it. He swings it back again, and I hold my sword with both hands vertically to block it, causing him to stumble. At this point I nail him on the leg and trip him down, and then point my sword at his head. "I win!"

"Daaang, that was sick!" Darius says, standing up. "Where did you learn to block like that?"

"Wii Sports Resort, I think," I reply. "You just gotta hold your blade perpendicular to your opponent's."

"That was really short," Minerva says.

"Well, yeah, it kinda was," I agree. "But that could give us time to switch out more often. It's probably best that winner stays, so next would be me and you, Minerva."

Darius tosses his sword to Minerva, who catches it by the blade and moves her hand to the handle. "Tell us when to start, honey."

"Okay...start."

Minerva jumps at me and swings diagonally. I block the attack, but my sword is almost knocked back into my face. Minerva swings again; I dodge that attack twice, but the third smashes straight into my shoulder.

"OW!" I yell as I kneel down and grab my shoulder. "Why'd you have to hit me so hard?"

"Didn't you say it was supposed to hurt?" Minerva responds.

"Well...yeah, you're right," I concede as I feel a small amount of Justice ignite within me. "Darius, you're up."

Darius takes my sword and gets ready to battle while I step off to the side. When I give the word for the fight to start, Minerva comes out swinging, but Darius knocks her attack away and lands a hit right on her head.

"Argh! Wow, those were some cool moves," Minerva comments. "Looks like I'm out."

"Okay, these fights seriously are way too short," I announce. "We need to focus more on defense."

In my next fight with Darius, we both block a few of each other's quick swings, until Darius hits my ribcage. It definitely hurts, but nothing's broken. Minerva beats Darius by knocking his sword out of his hands, I use the incline up the side of the gutter to catch Minerva off guard...we go on like this for about five more minutes. By the time we're done, we're in pretty bad physical shape, but I do believe we've learned a thing or two about dueling.

"This has got to be one of the most painful things I've ever done," I remark.

"Agreed," Darius says.

"Okay, I was secretly keeping track of how many times each person won," Minerva tells us, "and the overall winner is...X with twelve."

"Nice going, X," Darius compliments me. "We should do this again sometime...much later. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make it home today."

"Well babe, looks like you'll have to figure something out, 'cause I'm the only one who can do this!" Minerva turns on her watch and floats up to the street. "Race you home again!"

"Aw, come on!" Darius says, trying to climb up the gutter.

"Well, you did cheat in the last race," I remind him. "I think I'm going out the long way. See you later, dude."

"You too, man."

I walk out the gutter the way I came in and head home, remembering that there's one more thing I need to do before I can call it a day. I head home and step inside.

"Okay, I'm back," I announce to my family as I make my way upstairs, where my mom is playing on the computer in her room.

"Xavier, what on Earth happened to you this time?" my mom demands.

In this situation, I've got no good reason to lie. "Well...my friends and I were having sword fights..."

"With wooden swords? You've got church tomorrow! What made you think that was a good idea?"

The real me is thinking that I just wanted to see how well I could handle pain, but the obedient me knows that this is no good excuse. I slowly aim my eyes and head towards the ground in shame.

"Go get some ice and rest for a little while. You should be taking better care of yourself."

I follow her directions. I'm definitely in no position to not.

* * *

As soon as I'm feeling better and I'm sure Mom isn't mad at me anymore, I ask to go to Erika's house to deliver a project to her, and am granted permission. I grab Erika's watch and my school binder so nobody will think I'm lying, and leave the house.

When I get to Erika's house, I ring the doorbell. Her dad gets there in about seven seconds.

"Hey there, X. Do you need something?"

"Is Erika here? I just need to talk to her for a minute."

"Yeah, she's here. Erika!" After a few seconds, she standing in front of me.

"Hi, X. How are you doing?"

"Pretty good, I guess, how about you?"

"I'm okay."

"Okay, so first of all, our watches came in yesterday." I hand Erika her watch, and she puts it on and tests it. Her soul activates instantly.

"Wow, thanks."

"If anybody asks, Darius got us these because he's a baller like that."

"Oh, okay. How did your spy mission go?"

"Well, the gang stole our watches, so we had to fight for them, and all we ended up hearing was something about them getting guns. How was your recon mission?"

"Oh, it was great. Whimsalot knew so much about interrogating bystanders. He showed me all the best ways to help people remember as much as possible about what they saw. And he said we could do it again next week!"

"That's cool, but...did you get any good info?"

"Oh, right. One person said he saw Richards's car driving out of town on the freeway, so it seems that he's probably staying somewhere in Sterlington. Whimsalot said he and the Guard would start searching for him there."

"Nice. Well, I gotta go home now, so I'll see you later."

"Bye."

So Richards is in Sterlington, a slightly larger town north of Smithplain famous around here for things like amusement parks? Honestly, I don't know my way around that place, so I'm not sure what help we'll be there. Eh, I guess we won't know until we go for it, so, we'll do that. Later.

* * *

 **Sorry, but it doesn't look like I can stick with any promises I make about when this will update. Really, when this updates depends on how well I can get into writing it and how bored I get. I will keep working on this though, I promise.**

 **Next chapter...well, let's just say that nobody expected this to happen already.**


	15. Not Fun Anymore

**Insert pointless filler AN here**

* * *

Alright, headed for the bus stop. Hopefully this week won't suck. Not that last week did, just...school tends to suck sometimes. I'm wearing my watch to school, by the way.

And there's Erika. She's always at the bus stop before I am.

"Hey, Erika," I say, stepping up next to her.

"Good morning, X."

...We got nothing else to say at this point. We get on the bus and head over to sit by Azalea...except she's not there.

"Oh come on, she had to get sick on a Monday!" I exclaim.

"Calm down X, you'll be fine," Erika insists.

"Okay, sorry about that..."

I get out my school-issued iPad and start playing Crossy Road, until Darius and Minerva show up.

"Man, I was up so late last night doing chemistry homework," Darius expresses.

"Dude, chemistry's easy," I tell him. "You just learn the rules and put it in the calculator."

"There's so many freaking numbers, dude! It takes me two minutes to do one problem."

"Do you have all the formulas down, though?" Erika asks. "There's a test today."

"I think so," Darius responds. "Which one was Gay-Lussac's Law again?"

"Temperature and pressure of a gas are directly related. In degrees Kelvin."

"Okay, thanks."

Do neither of them realize Azalea isn't here? This is the first time she hasn't been on the bus ride to school since before winter break! Speaking of breaks...

"Hey guys, isn't it Spring Break next week?" I ask.

"Holy crap, it totally is!" says Minerva. "I can't believe I forgot that."

"Don't worry about it," Erika suggests. "The past week and a half has been rather...eventful."

"Yeah..." I say as I tune out. Our lives definitely have gotten better, but it's only been this way for a little over a week, and...it probably won't go on much longer. Once we get Mason Richards, the Shadow Guard will go after the rest of the cult, and leave us here. Our watches will run out of magic eventually, and then we won't even be able to use our soul powers anymore. Even if they activate some other way, we can't let other people see this stuff. And while it's nice to know that monsters are living alright with humans for the most part, it could be decades before they're revealed to the rest of the world and vice versa...and Undertale's annoying fanbase probably isn't going to help that.

When the bus driver lets us off the bus, we head inside, and I use the school's wi-fi to send Azalea a message: _Are you doing okay?_ Actually, now that I think about it, it's possible she just missed the bus. Eh, we'll see.

Once again, our percussion teacher isn't here, so I spend the whole period practicing playing "Ruins" on the marimba. Pretty much anytime I find a song I really like, I end up trying to play it on the marimba in band class. Ruins is pretty easy actually, and I'm also not bad at Heartache. Gonna be some time before I can stop missing notes, though.

English is boring, crap I didn't finish the assignment and I'll have to stay after school...chemistry test isn't hard, so I'm done early, gonna check my phone, and...Azalea hasn't responded. She must really be sick. I probably shouldn't bother her with more messages.

Yep, now I'm in Spanish class and Azalea isn't here. This isn't such a great day so far.

Oh, but now our World History teacher is letting us listen to music while we work! I haven't done that it a while, so I get out my earphones and open up Pandora on my iPad. Now let's see if I can find some good nightcore or dubstep...

Holy dang, this is one of my favorites! I feel like I could take on the freaking world listening to this! This worksheet's got nothing on my analysis skills...wait, actually I suck at analysis. But still, it's going down!

"Hey X, what's that on your shirt?" the dude sitting to my right, Brandon, says to me.

I look down and realize that my soul is activating slightly. Crap.

"Oh, I think that's just...I was playing a game, and I accidentally turned up the brightness really high," I tell him, calming myself while pretending to turn my iPad's brightness down.

"Oh, okay, I just thought there was a bug on your shirt or something, that's all," he says, getting back to work.

Dang, I hate lying to people all the time like this. That's, what, three times to my family and six times to my classmates? I'm starting to see why superheroes tend to wish they aren't superheroes from time to time. If I keep having moments like that, eventually someone's going to notice that something's going on. And if I want it to stop, I'll have to pretty much quit being myself around anyone but my closest friends.

Yeah, nothing's really going well today. Guess I'll eat lunch.

"X? Uh...is something bothering you?" Erika asks after watching me eat slowly for a few minutes

"Eh, maybe," I reply. "My soul flared up and someone saw it again. I don't think we're going to be able to keep this stuff hidden forever."

"Hmm...you may be right. There's got to be a way to keep them down somehow."

"I hope. I'd hate to quit being fair to people. And I sure as heck wouldn't want you to have to stop being such an honest friend."

"Of course. Do you have the Shadow Guard's number? I could try to figure something out next time I see them."

"Oh, yeah, here you go."

I open up the contacts list on my phone and show the number to Erika while she adds it to her contacts. Dang, Erika's such a great friend. I really hit the jackpot all those years ago.

Note taking in Child Development, percussion ensemble rehearsal in band, and now I gotta stay after for English. Honestly, English is pretty much my worst subject. Like I said, I suck at analysis, and I can barely write an essay, especially if I only get 45 minutes. Thank goodness I get a tutoring session to catch up on this annotation and thesis-statement-writing assignment.

Okay, I think I got it down. Now I can finally go home.

I head down to the main doors and get out my phone to text my...wait, is that a dollar bill outside?

I step outside and...it is a freaking HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL! I run to pick it up, but the wind blows it away. I chase after it, but dang, it's moving fast. Wait a minute, it's not windy at all right now. Is this dollar bill even real?

Ow! Someone's grabbed me! Get your hand out of my face! Wait, is that...no...

* * *

 **Sorry, I know this chapter was short, but I seriously don't know what else would happen during a normal school day that you'd want to read about.**

 **Next chapter will be a lot more interesting.**


	16. Blade at the Throat

**Here we are. A better chapter.**

* * *

Wow, dreams can get pretty crazy. I'm gonna check the clock...but why can't I move? I don't even think I'm lying down.

Okay, it feels like I'm tied to a chair. I can't see anything. Maybe I'm still dreaming? My head hurts...wait a minute. I'm definitely awake. I got chloroformed earlier, which means...I've been kidnapped. I really hope I didn't get any brain damage or anything.

This is bad. I think I know who did this, but the fact that he found me means he probably knows where I live or something, which means he could come after my family and then even if nobody dies, I'm at least going to be grounded until I move out, and my mom may even force me to break up with Azalea or worse. Basically, my life sucks right now and it may be my fault.

It's pitch-black in here, so I have no idea what this room even looks like, much less where I am in general. There could be someone nearby who would want to know that I've woken up, so...maybe I should make myself heard?

"H-hello?" I say quietly. "Hello?" Wow, I sound like Phone Guy.

"Huh? Do you need something else?" a feminine voice asks...but this isn't just any feminine voice.

"Azalea?" I call out quietly. "It's X."

"*GASP* Oh no!" Azalea exclaims. "I'm really sorry...he had a knife, and I didn't know any of the things he wanted me to tell him, so-"

"Wait...he got you first, and then he made you tell him where to find me?"

"Uh...yes, I'm sorry!"

"Azalea, don't worry, it's not your fault. And actually, if you've been captured, then I'd rather be here with you than let you be stuck here alone."

"Oh...thanks...but-"

Suddenly I hear another voice coming from the right. "Alright, shut up, I'm ready to get to work here."

The light comes on, and the man in the red ninja mask, Mason Richards, steps into the room, which appears to have walls and floors covered in something soft. Looks like I've got my back to a wall with Azalea right across from me, both of us tied to chairs with ropes.

"Here's the deal," he starts. "You kids seem to have given me some strange enhanced abilities. And you're going to tell me how to control them, and..." he holds up his wrist, "how this watch works."

"Uh...why should I...tell you...this stuff?" I somewhat daringly ask.

"Because I've got a machete," he replies, unsheathing one and pointing it Azalea, "and she is completely defenseless."

Yeah, at this point I'm pretty much this guy's...I can't think of a clean word that would make sense here and sound funny/cool at the same time.

"Okay, I'll talk," I tell him. "The easiest way to control your powers is with the watch. You just press the blue button to turn it on and off. All of the other buttons pretty much just do all the things a normal watch does."

Richards presses the button and his cyan soul lights up on his chest. "Hmm...great. How does it work?"

"I'm not lying, it's literally magic. The watch gives off a small amount of magic that reacts with your soul to give you power somehow."

"Whatever, where does this "magic" come from?"

"Wait...have you even heard of Undertale?"

"Answer the question."

Uh...wow. I'll take that as a no. I think. "Magic...comes from monsters."

"I knew it! That d**n _thing_ you were with that one night that I couldn't kill! And those other ones that I probably could have killed...alright, now tell me where they are!"

"Okay, okay!" Azalea is silently losing it while I give Richards the current address of the Shadow Guard.

"This is much better than my original plan," Richards remarks. "Those things are going to make me unstoppable. Alright, now if you lied about where they are..." he stares straight at me while pointing his machete at Azalea, "you will watch her die right in front of you."

"That's where they are," I assure him.

"And don't expect anyone save you, either. If you couldn't already tell, this room's near completely soundproof."

"I know about the cult."

The heck did I just say? Now someone's definitely going to die.

"The what?"

"Uh...aren't you in a cult that wants to wipe out the human race?"

"How do you know about that?! How long have you been stalking me?!"

"I haven't, I haven't! But...the monsters have."

"Alright, that's it! I'm going after them right now! And I'm going to kill as many as I can and then force the rest to get rid of anyone else who ever gets in my way again!"

On that note, Richards storms out of the room and slams the door behind him, leaving me and Azalea to reflect on the current situation.

"X, we have to get out of here somehow!" Azalea exclaims. "He said he's going to kill them!"

"Yeah, he is," I reply. "Assuming he's leaving right now, and that we're near the city limits, I'd say we've got ten minutes to warn the Shadow Guard that he's coming. If we do, maybe they can do some sort of counter strike and get him arrested."

"But how are we going to do that? We're stuck in this room!"

"I think this guy forgot exactly who he's trying to hold prisoner."

"Huh? Ohhhh, right! Maybe you can use your bullets to break the rope!"

"I don't know, I'm not sure they're strong enough to break through rope..."

"I saw you blow up Trent last week, it was pretty big. Maybe if you focused it more or something."

"Well, I guess it's worth a shot. Wanna help get my soul activated?"

"Okay, Justice right? Um...Richards is going to kill the monsters?"

"Alright, I think we're headed in the right direction. Why do we need to fix that situation?"

"Well...what have they done to him?"

"Let's see, spied on him, track him down here to get him arrested...but he needs to get arrested for killing people! Especially if it'll stop him from killing anyone else...because as far as I'm concerned, _nobody deserves to die._ "

My soul starts glowing pretty bright. I get ready to shoot a bullet from my chest, but first I focus as much power as I can into the smallest space possible... _nobody must die...EVERYONE MUST LIVE..._ and release.

*CRACK*

The section of rope closest to my soul breaks straight in half. From there, I'm able to get the rope to loosen and unwrap, and in no time I'm free. Now I go over to untie Azalea's ropes, which is a bit difficult, but it doesn't take too long.

"Thank you!" Azalea says, standing up and hugging me. "Now let's go."

"Wait, there could be someone else outside this door," I tell her. "Let's be careful."

I walk over to the door and open it very slowly and carefully, checking to see what's on the other side. All I can see is a computer screen over to the left. We must be inside Richards' house or something.

"Alright, the coast is clear," I say to Azalea. "First we need to find our backpacks and stuff, they should be around here somewhere."

Azalea goes to the left towards the computer and turns on a light, while I open the door to a room to the right. This looks like his bedroom, not much of interest in here...and I don't see our backpacks.

"I found them!" Azalea suddenly calls out. I head down to the computer room, where Azalea is looking for something in her backpack, which is sitting right next to mine.

"Score!" I remark. "Let me get my phone and call them...it's 10:44?! My mom's gonna hate me so much for this! Alright, here we go..." The phone on their end rings twice before they pick up. "Hello?"

"This is X. Azalea and I got captured by Mason Richards, and he forced us to tell him where you live, so now we're at his place and he's on his way to your apartment. Maybe you guys can call the police and trap him when he shows up or something."

"Hold on, he captured you? Are you alright?" Sounds like Knight Knight.

"Yeah, we're fine, we broke out, just be ready when he shows up."

"I could come and get you now if you want."

"Look, I appreciate you wanting to help us out and all, but this guy has guns, a machete, and probably a bunch of other weapons and stuff and he wants to kill you guys. Oh yeah, and he has my watch. And I don't even know where we are right now. I'll look up our location, you call us back when you're done with Richards."

I hang up and look at Azalea, who's eating food from her lunchbox.

"Oh, sorry," she says. "I haven't eaten since breakfast so I'm starving. Want something?"

"Nah, you need food more than I do," I tell her, getting on the computer and noticing that Google Maps is already open, showing the route from this place to the apartment of the Shadow Guard. I peek through the blinds on a window and see that we are, in fact, in an apartment. One that I now know the address of.

"You doing alright, Azalea?" I ask.

"I guess," she replies. "I'm afraid for the monsters, though."

"Don't worry, they've been doing stuff like this for years. Now that they know he's coming, there's no way they'll let themselves get killed."

"Well, you're right, but what if he gets away again and comes back here?"

"Hopefully he doesn't know that we've already broken out and we can just find some way to neutralize him ourselves. We got this. We're pretty much already home free."

Azalea stands up and throws her arms over my shoulders. "I just don't think I'm ready these kinds of things..."

I hug her back and let us fall back onto a couch. "Even if _you_ aren't ready, and even if _I'm_ not ready, I think _we_ are. If that makes sense."

We hold each other like this for just a few more minutes, until my phone rings. Looks like it's time to find out how things went.

* * *

 **Again, sorry about last chapter, I just didn't want to rush straight into this intense stuff. And honestly, I really can't resist throwing in some fluff here and there. Hope it didn't bother anyone.**

 **Next chapter, was the Shadow Guard able to take care of Richards themselves...or will X and Azalea have to finish the job?**


	17. Blue Light, Orange Light

**Here's what happens next.**

* * *

"X, this is Whimsalot. Richards escaped. Knight Knight and Final were able to disarm him, but he ran back to his car and drove off before the rest of us were able to get back to the apartment and stop him. Can you give us the address of his current residence?"

Crap. Sounds like they didn't have enough time. I tell them our location.

"Thanks. We'll be there ASAP. That is how you use that saying, right?"

"Uh, yeah, pretty much. Okay, we'll do our best to survive until you get here. Try not to worry too much about us."

"I can do that. See you later."

"You too."

I hang up. Wait a minute, what the heck was I doing telling _Whimsalot_ not to worry?

"What did they say?" Azalea asks.

"They didn't get him and he's coming back. We gotta arm ourselves."

"Oh my gosh, he is? Oh no, we're gonna die, and I didn't even-"

"Azalea, don't worry, we got this. Listen, I'll go outside and keep watch for him, you search the place for weapons or anything we can use to defend ourselves."

Azalea speeds off to a different room while I go outside onto a balcony walkway and look down at the street. Wait a minute, Richards still has my watch. Let's see if the Shadow Guard picked up anything on his power. Calling them back again.

"Hello?"

"This is X. Richards has a light blue soul. Do you guys know what power that gives him?"

"Well, I think there was one type of human soul that slowed down the human's perception of time...was that light blue?"

Definitely not purple. Last I checked, that had something to do with lines. "Yeah, I think that'll do. Thanks."

"You're welcome. We'll be right there."

"Thanks, see you then."

Slows his perception of time...does that mean time moves slower in his head than in others'? That does sound like it would make him dangerous. Unless we could use our own powers against him...I mean, obviously we should do that.

Oh crud, there's his car approaching the parking lot. It's time. I run back inside. "Find anything, Azalea?"

"All I found is a few knives." Oh...honestly, being an Undertale fanboy, knives don't appeal to me.

"Okay, that's fine. We've still got our powers. Right now is the perfect situation to use your shield."

"But how? I don't think I can feel any kindness toward him when I'm so scared of him."

"Just listen. Right now, you're working to get a criminal arrested. Normally police officers and detectives get paid to do this stuff, right?"

"Yeah."

"But you, you're sacrificing your time and safety to stop Richards faster than they would be able to on their own, and not asking anything in return. Think about how many lives you may be saving by doing this."

Azalea closes her eyes for a second until her green soul lights up on her chest and her shield appears in front of her. This is just beautiful.

"There you go, now just hold on to that feeling and you'll be just fine."

Suddenly I hear the door slam open behind us. "YOU! You told them I was coming didn't you?!"

Azalea's shield flickers, but then steadies itself. I grab a knife from her hand.

"It's their apartment! If you're going to break into it, they at least deserve to know about it ahead of time!" I say to Richards, turning around to face him. Richards's soul is activated, and he's carrying what looks like a white, futuristic machine gun, but there's some sort of lens over the barrel(?). There's no way that's what I think it is...?

"I DON'T ****ING CARE WHAT THEY DESERVE!" Richards yells. "I was going to shoot you in the head when I ran out of use for you, but now I'm going make your death painful!"

I duck behind Azalea as Richards activates his weapon, and HOLY CRAP an orange laser is hitting her shield. Richards changes the laser to blue, then orange, and then blue again, until...he gets frustrated and runs straight at Azalea, smashing the weapon into her head.

Azalea is knocked straight onto her back and doesn't get up. I'm about to make sure she's okay, when Richards turns the laser on me. I freeze in place the best I can...the laser feels sort of warm, but it doesn't hurt at all.

"DIE!" Richards shouts, turning the laser orange. The laser starts to hurt, until I start running. Richards follows me with the laser, leaving burn marks on the wall as I circle him. Then he turns it blue, catching me off guard and burning me until I stand still.

"You will pay for hurting my girlfriend," I tell him. "And whatever else you've done."

"Why isn't this WORKING?!" Richards yells as he turns the laser orange and I start moving again, this time more on point with his switching. He then charges at me, but I throw myself to the side, and...fall on the floor.

Richards puts his foot on my chest. "Now I can _finally..._ fry your head right off."

He starts aiming the orange laser closer to my head. I start shaking my head back and forth as fast as I can in this position, trying to not die and at the same time realizing how close I am to dying, and-

"Hocus..."

A dark blue, spherical object nails him right in the head and knocks him out.

"...pocus."

I look towards the door and see Madjick with both of his orbs hovering around his head and the rest of the Shadow Guard behind him. Knight Knight and Whimsalot come over to help me up while Astigmatism and Reaper Bird start to tie up Richards.

"Are you two alright?" Knight Knight asks.

"Well, I'm fine, but Azalea took a huge hit to the head and now she's out cold!" I exclaim.

"I can heal her," Whimsalot tells me, flying over to Azalea. "Just give me a few seconds and then you can get her out of here."

Whimsalot puts his hands over Azalea's head while green magic in the shape of moths flows into her. This causes her eyes to start to open.

"Ohhh...hot springs...huh?"

"Azalea, we did it," I say, running over to her. "We got him. We can go home now."

"What happened?" she asks. "My head hurts a little..."

"I'll tell you once we're on our way home. Wait, Astigmatism, he had a laser, and make sure you grab my watch off his wrist."

Astigmatism tosses me my watch and starts examining the laser. "Wait a minute...this must be the one that was stolen from the testing zone months ago!"

"We need to leave now," Final says...wait, did he just speak English? "The police are coming."

Knight Knight and Astigmatism strenuously lift the laser off the floor, while I help Azalea stand up and walk to the door. From there, we head down the balcony and the stairs as fast as we can until we reach the Shadow Guard's car, which is dark gray with very dark windows. We load the laser into the trunk, and then Whimsalot, Final, and Reaper Bird squeeze/melt themselves inside with it. Knight Knight gets in the driver's seat, Astigmatism takes the passenger seat next to her, and the rest of us load into the back seat; Azalea, then me, and then Madjick.

"The police aren't going to come after us, are they?" I ask.

"Hopefully not, they seemed pretty excited about catching Richards," Astigmatism replies. "And we made it pretty d**n clear to them that we weren't him."

"Okay, good," I remark. "Azalea, are you feeling okay?"

"I think I'm feeling better now," she answers. "Could you tell me about what happened again?"

I start giving her a recap of my encounter with the laser and how I almost got killed. Honestly, while it's pretty cool how I survived that, I don't think I want to be in a situation like that again. And I shouldn't anyway, because this whole investigation and capture thing is finally over.

* * *

 **Can't freaking believe I got this done so fast. I guess I'm just enjoying this more now.**

 **If I made this sound like it's the last chapter, it's not. There will be a few more.**

 **And I haven't been saying this much, but make sure to leave a review to let me know how you feel about this story. No matter what you have to say, I'd love to hear it. I may even respond to questions.**

 **Next chapter, everyone makes it home safely...or do they?**


	18. More Freaking Knives

**Welcome back.**

* * *

"So, he didn't know how the laser worked?" Azalea asks me once we're out on the road.

"I don't think he did, he got pretty darn angry whenever it didn't hurt me," I reply.

"Where could he have gotten a magic laser?"

"Well, I think these guys said that it was stolen from a testing zone or something, right?"

"Right," Astigmatism responds. "The government was testing those lasers as weapons in a top-secret testing facility that even we don't know the location of. One of them went unaccounted for a few months ago. We suspected the cult had something to do with it, but we always hoped we were wrong. If they find out for sure that magic and monsters exist, they might come looking for Ebott City, and I don't need to mention what they could do if they had access to such resources."

The DT Extraction Machine springs to my mind. "Yeah, that could be pretty bad," I reply. "By the way, do you guys always stuff yourselves in the trunk when you travel together?"

"Well, we always keep Reaper Bird back there, since he tends to draw a lot of unwanted attention otherwise, but usually we can get away with putting Whimsalot and Final in the back seat."

"Anyways, do you think Richards played Undertale?" Azalea asks me.

"Well, he didn't understand how blue and orange lasers work, or where magic comes from, so I'm guessing he didn't," I answer. "But then why the heck is he in a cult that follows Chara if he doesn't know them like everyone else does?"

"What does it matter?" Astigmatism asks. "We got him, we can quit trying to decode his motives and stuff now."

"Are you two hungry?" Knight Knight asks me and Azalea. "I could make a stop at our apartment and get you something to eat if you feel like that would help."

"Actually yeah, I'd like that," I reply. "How about you, Azalea?"

"That sounds good to me," she answers.

We sit around quietly for the next several minutes, while Knight Knight drives us down the freeway back into Smithplain. I've never been able to really fall asleep in a car, but Azalea seems like she's starting to fall asleep on me, though I'm not complaining. Eventually we get off the freeway and pull into the Shadow Guard's apartment, and Knight Knight leads me and Azalea out of the car and to their door.

"So...what kinds of food do you got?" I ask while Knight Knight unlocks the door.

"We should have a few spider donuts left, if you'd like those," she replies.

Generally, anything with spiders in it has never sounded all that good to me, but if the Shadow Guard was willing to bring some here with them, they must be alright, so I accept the offer. Knight Knight leads me and Azalea over to their small kitchen, where a box containing three small, dark purple donuts is sitting on the counter. I take one from the box...feels like a regular donut so far.

I take a small bite. It's slightly tougher than I'm used to donuts being, and it has a slight bitter, meaty accent to it, but other than that, it tastes like a donut. Except now it's dissolving in my mouth almost as fast as cotton candy, and I'm getting a sudden yet brief rush of energy. Forgot that monster food worked differently, but that definitely doesn't make it any less awesome. I'm about to eat the rest of the donut, but it looks like Azalea hasn't started on hers yet.

"Come on, it's actually not bad," I tell her. "Plus it's magical, so it feels really cool to eat."

Azalea slowly takes a tiny bite, and then to my delight, appears to lose any doubt she had in spider donuts. We then eat the rest of the donuts in about twenty seconds, and then it almost feels like we haven't eaten them at all.

"Well, my head feels better, but I'm still hungry," Azalea comments.

"Apologies, I forgot that magical food has less Calories than physical food," Knight Knight says. "Hopefully Astigmatism won't mind if you have some of his meat."

We grab a few pieces of beef jerky out of a bag on the counter, which are pretty tasty. Not very filling, but I don't feel like it's worth taking anything else at this point, so now we're ready to leave.

"Wait," Knight Knight says when we get to the door. "It's not safe. Let me go first."

Knight Knight grabs her cloak off the wall, puts it on, and draws her Good Morningstar while Azalea and I stand aside. She opens the door slowly and looks outside. I put my hand on my watch. Then I put Azalea's hand on my watch. We stand quietly...until we hear a small tink sound. When we peek through the blinds on the window, we see...the same freaking kid that tried to kill us that one night!

This kid is just throwing knives at Knight Knight, who is blocking all of them. But when one of the knives grazes her arm, I turn on my watch, run outside, and just blast him in the face repeatedly until he falls down and drops all his knives. When he tries to get up, I run up to him, grab him, and pin him against the wall. I've darn well had enough of this insanity.

"Dude! The heck are you trying to kill us for?" I yell at him.

"None of your business!" he yells at me. He seems to be about ten or eleven years old.

"Buddy, if someone is going to die, they need to be given a reason," I tell him, looking him straight in the eyes. "And it had better be a good freaking reason."

"Let me go! I need kills!" the kid shouts.

"How can you expect me to let you go if you're just going to try to kill me?" I ask. "Look, I don't want to hurt you, I just want to know why you attacked my friend."

"He's big and tough. That kill is gonna be worth a lot of XP."

"Who told you about EXP?"

"The guy in the red ninja mask said that killing people gives you XP and makes you level up and get stronger. Like in a video game."

Holy crap, I knew Richards was dangerous, but didn't know he would go so far as to manipulate kids and turn them into mindless killers. "Listen, dude, I'm not going to prove that wrong, but do you have any friends or family?"

"No. My parents are dead."

Seriously?! How much do people need to torture some kid? "Well, I've got friends and family, and so does my friend over there. If any of us were to die, it would probably make our friends just as sad as you probably were when your parents died."

"Oh...I didn't think anybody besides the cops cared about what I did."

I loosen my grip on him. "I care at least a little about what everyone does. Life is so much better for everyone when everyone is nice to everyone. So here's the deal: I'm alright with you doing whatever you need to do to survive, just don't hurt anyone."

"Okay. Can I go now?"

I let go of him. "Alright, fine, and you can have your knives back as long as you don't use them to hurt anyone."

The kid runs over to Knight Knight and Azalea, who's checking to make sure Knight Knight is alright, and starts gathering his knives. Once he's got them all, he runs off in the direction opposite of the car.

"That was...impressive," Knight Knight commends me. "You remind me of Frisk."

"Wait, really?" I reply literally immediately.

"I am certain that they would agree with nearly everything you just said."

I want to scream because I'm psyched about being on par with Frisk themself, but I don't because I also care a lot for the safety of monsters. Instead, I sprint back to the car, motioning for Knight Knight and Azalea to follow. I jump in the back seat and wait for the others to get in as well, until they do and we start driving towards our neighborhood.

"So, you like beef jerky?" I ask Astigmatism.

"Well, yeah, I eat it," he replies. "Crazy thing about human food: it can make monsters as much as five times as physically strong. Especially meats."

"It does?" I remark. "Wow...that might actually explain quite a bit."

"How did you know that boy was there outside the apartment?" Azalea asks Knight Knight.

"Monsters become easier to kill when one wants to kill them," she answers. "I noticed this change in myself and acted accordingly."

Now that she mentions this, I think I remember the books in the Snowdin library saying something about that. Maybe I should play Undertale again, it's been forever. "Sorry we keep asking so many questions," I tell the monsters.

"No problem," Madjick says. "Everyone wants to know about us, we're used to it." Seriously, what is it about his voice that messes with people's heads like that?

The rest of the drive goes quietly, until we're almost home, and I realize what's about to happen. When my mom sees me after I haven't contacted her or come home all afternoon and evening, and then finds out that I've gotten myself kidnapped, there's no telling what she'll do to me. Of course she won't beat me or anything, she's a good mom, unlike some I've heard of during my time on the fanbase. But I don't want the next two years of my life to suck just because the last week or so was awesome.

As we're approaching our neighborhood, I ask Knight Knight to park at a nearby church for a minute so I could have a minute alone with Azalea, and then we get out of the car together and head around a corner.

"Is something wrong, X?" she asks me.

"Azalea...we've been gone the whole night so far, and nobody knew where we were. And what's possibly our parents' worst nightmare is about to come true: that we were kidnapped."

Here it comes, the moment that's going to make or break us. I look her in the eyes.

"No matter how this situation affects our lives in the long run...Azalea, I love you, and I'm not going to let us fall apart no matter how many rules we've broken tonight."

Oh crud, I said it. Azalea's eyes get a little watery..."I love you too X...I don't want to ever stop seeing you..."

At this point, we kiss for the second time ever. Honestly, I don't think I could put into words how happy I feel right now. But what I can say is that if I didn't want to go home before, I really don't want to now. But, unfortunately, there's nothing else to do.

As Azalea and I head around the corner, we run right into Knight Knight.

"Whoa dang! Sorry, I...what's going on?" I stammer.

"I'm sorry, I was worried that you were having trouble with something, and I wanted to see if I could help."

"Oh, well, uh, I think we're pretty much good," I say. "Just about to get grounded until I move out for getting kidnapped..."

"Would you like me to talk to your parents?" Knight Knight suggests. "They may be more lenient toward you if they understood why you did it."

"Well, I guess, if you don't mind one or two more people finding out you exist."

Azlaea speaks up. "My mom played Undertale, so she might be happy to see me with you."

"Well, my mom hasn't, so I think it's best that Knight Knight talks to my parents, since she looks the most like a human," I explain. "Azalea, you get Whimsalot or Astigmatism or someone."

"Alright, we will do what we can to make sure you aren't mistreated for the work you've done," Knight Knight says.

We all get back in the car and start driving the next hundred feet to our neighborhood. Having the Shadow Guard on our side when we're in trouble with our parents could have its advantages and disadvantages. I really hope this goes okay.

* * *

 **A quick question for you guys: I know there are already a lot of these, but would you guys like it if I did an Ask for this fanfiction once it's finished? Let me know in a review or a PM or something what you would like about that.**

 **Next chapter, well, you know.**


	19. We're Not Done Yet

**Last chapter. Gonna wrap things up and set the basis for the sequel I MEAN...pretend you didn't read that yet.**

* * *

Once we've dropped off Azalea and Whimsalot at her house, we drive over to my house, where Knight Knight and I get out to begin my return home. And I am freaking scared. A little less scared than if I were alone, but still not ready for my mom to scream at me. Usually when my mom gets really mad at me, it's because my grades are bad or I didn't do my chores or something. Getting kidnapped is like at least two levels higher on the scale of bad things I could do.

"Wait," Knight Knight says, stopping me. "How were you captured?"

"Well, I was about to call my mom to pick me up from tutoring, but then I thought I saw a hundred dollar bill outside the school, so I chased after it, and then someone chloroformed me," I recap.

"Then it is not your fault," she tells me. "Anyone else would have done the same thing."

"Oh...well, thanks," I say back. I guess I feel a little more confident now. As soon as Knight Knight is hidden behind the wall next to the porch, I ring the doorbell. The door opens after about ten seconds.

"XAVIER! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN FOR THE PAST EIGHT HOURS!?" my mom yells.

"I...was kidnapped," I say quietly.

"What?! Who did that? How did you get home?"

Oh...this isn't quite how I expected her to react.

"Uh...a guy from Stirlington...he got arrested...and some friends drove me home. I could have one of them talk to you if you want."

"The radio said that someone from Ohio got arrested in Stirlington for murder and thievery...whatever, who are your friends that brought you home?"

"Um, just...please don't freak out when you see her, she's...not what you'd expect."

I motion for Knight Knight to come out, and she steps up onto the porch.

"Whoa! What is that on her stomach?" Mom asks, referring to Knight Knight's torso-face, and clearly surprised.

"I don't know, she's a monster, and they can look like pretty much anything," I explain.

"A monster?"

"Beings made of magic, yet completely civilized and morally equal to humans. I'm not lying, Mom, magic is real, and this is living proof. Uh, I mean...Mom, this is Knight Knight (that's with Ks, as in medieval knight), whose reasons for being around here will probably remain confidential, but she is a pretty nice person. Knight Knight, this is my mom, who, well, is a mom, which I think is saying a lot. In a good way."

Mom holds up her hand to let me know to shut up, and starts talking to Knight Knight. "How did you meet Xavier?"

"Xavier..." Knight Knight mutters to herself. I guess I never did tell her my real name. "My company was searching for humans to help us with something, and we believed that your son and his friends were the ones we could trust the most. The world cannot be alerted to the existence of monsters, after all."

"Why would you choose him, of all people?"

"He was the strongest monster supporter we had met outside of our hometown."

"Xavier, where on Earth did you hear about these creatures?" Mom asks me. (Uh, hopefully Knight Knight won't take that as an insult.)

"Mom, Undertale is all about monsters," I tell her. "My friends and I talk about it all the time."

Mom turns back to Knight Knight. "Did you get my son kidnapped?"

"I can assure you, we had no way of preventing it from happening."

"Xavier, how did it happen?"

I tell her what I told Knight Knight. Mom sighs. "Tomorrow morning, I'll have to call the school and talk to them about perimeter security, then. You're not hurt, are you?"

"Nah, I'm fine. The guy who kidnapped me wasn't too bad. And he did get arrested."

"Do you have homework due tomorrow?"

"Oh, uh, yeah, I guess I do."

"Go get to work on that while I finish talking to Knight, please."

I head over to the kitchen table and get my homework out of my backpack. All I have tonight is a chemistry notes video, so it shouldn't take too long, but I really just wanna go to sleep already. Eh, I'll do it. I could use some time to do normal stuff that won't get anyone killed or anything.

* * *

Well, things didn't go too bad. My mom wasn't really mad at me for getting kidnapped, though she did end up grounding me for a day for lying about the time I went and hung out at the Shadow Guard's apartment for a few hours. She also asked me some more questions about monsters; I answered what I knew about their biology, but then I told her for the thousandth time to play Undertale to learn their history, which I think she may have actually started.

If anyone, Azalea's the one who got lucky. From what she told me, it sounds like her mom was even happier that her kid was saved by monsters than my mom was. Neither of our moms found out that _both_ of us were kidnapped though.

Darius and Minerva wanted to know every detail of our encounter. They seemed pretty jealous that they weren't there, and I guess I can't blame them. Erika seemed like she was just happy she didn't have to sneak off on dangerous adventures anymore, though I know she enjoyed it as much as we did.

Now it's Wednesday, and I'm up in my room doing homework when I get another call from the Shadow Guard which I answer in a heartbeat.

"This is Whimsalot," says the caller. "I've got a few things that I'd like to tell you and your friends about."

"Alright," I reply. "Wait a second, I've got an idea. Do you guys have Google+ accounts?"

* * *

After about ten minutes of coordinating requests and addresses or whatever, I've got Whimsalot on a video call with me, Azalea, Minerva, and Erika. Guess Darius is busy or something.

"Alright, now that most of us are here, we can start," Whimsalot states. "You're all aware that Mason Richards was arrested, right?"

We all respond in some sort of affirmative fashion.

"Good, now on that subject, I've got some good news and, well, the truth."

"I'm intrigued, what's the truth?" Azalea asks.

"The truth is...there is no nuclear weaponry hidden anywhere in this town. There never was. We slipped Richards a false tip on the weaponry in order to separate him from the rest of the cult. And we told you that it was there because we were afraid you'd stop helping us after he attacked us all that night."

Honestly, I'd completely forgotten about the nukes, since after that night, it seemed that Richards was trying to hunt us down the whole time.

"Oh, come on!" Minerva exclaims. "Why does this town have to be so freaking normal?"

"What do you mean, normal?" I question. "There are monsters here, I don't know how much luckier we could have gotten."

"I'll tell you," Whimsalot says, "because that's the good news. Since we've just taken so many days off work, we're going to have to head back home soon."

Doesn't sound like good news to me so far.

"But since I've heard Spring Break is next week, how would you guys like to come with us?"

#########################################

That was my soul exploding. Because I literally can't think of anything else I'd rather do in my life than be in an entire city full of freaking monsters.

"Really?" Azalea says. "Yes! Yes! Yes a million times! I can't wait!"

"Get out!" Minerva shouts. "Uh, that's an expression of some sort, what I mean is HECK YEAH!"

"That would be a highlight of my life," Erika says. "Of course...Um, X? Are you alright?"

I'm looking down with wide eyes. "There's two more days of school left...I don't know how I'll make it now..."

"You'll be fine," Erika tells me. "It's the same amount of time, and the work won't be any harder."

"I know, but how can I care about school when I'm about to go to the most legendary place on this freaking planet?"

"We'll do it together," Azalea says. "I can't wait either, but maybe we can."

"You're right," I respond. "We got this."

"Okay, so where exactly is your hometown?" Erika asks.

"It's in New York," Whimsalot answers. "If we get up early and keep driving late, we should be able to make it in two days."

"Why don't we just fly there?" Minerva asks.

"Airport security. Enough said," I point out.

"Well, we'd need to discuss this stuff with our parents before we go," Azalea says. "And I'm not sure they'd let all of us go to Pennsylvania for a week without them."

"I could give them phone calls to convince them to let you go," Whimsalot says. "I'll even figure out some way to not tell them where you're really going and who we really are."

"Sounds good," I remark. "But seriously, what am I going to do until then?"

We take the next few minutes to give the Shadow Guard our home phone numbers just in case, until we end the call and I run off to tell my mom the news. Monday night was not an easy time, but it was freaking worth it if it means we get to visit the place where all the freaking monsters in the world live. Let's see, what kind of stuff would we do there? Stay at MTT Resort, maybe go to Grillby's or something and potentially meet Sans, tour the Underground, and HOLY DANG if I could actually meet Frisk in person, well, I don't know what I wouldn't give for that. One thing is certain, though: I'll never forget Spring Break 2016.

* * *

 **And that was Shadow Guard, in which several Undertale fans discover their favorite video game to have actually happened and find an opportunity to make the world a safer place. As you may have already noticed, this is only the first installment in a series. I'll start on the sequel soon, in which X and co. will head off to Ebott City for a whole week to basically fulfill all of their fanboy/fangirl desires.**

 **And because one out of one people voted for an Ask involving this story's characters, which is pretty much a unanimous vote, I will be making an Ask very soon that you may want to check out.**

 **Until then, remember to stay patient, brave, honest, uh...persevering, kind, just, and determined! Aaaaand I'm gone.**


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